In discussing issues, here's a biggie. A lot of concern in the news has been over a class divide by wealth. But there is another one.
When I read the article, I thought this was right. I've seen this exactly with my kids and how they are raising their kids. I was all for doing something about it-- right until I got to some of the suggestions how the intellectual class can reach down and I thought-- huh? Is reach down what we want? How about reach up?
The suggestion that we should encourage our grandkids, our kids to join the military as a way to level out classes? Seriously? Not going to happen. People join the military because they believe in it or it's their opportunity for educating themselves. To do it as some kind of leveling of the cultures makes no sense at all. When we had a draft, assuming we did that again with no deferments this time, did that do any intellectual class leveling? Most likely the more intellectually oriented people would end up officers and doesn't the military discourage fraternizing between ranks? Do people just stick to comfortable groups anyway?
Join churches? Not going to happen. And it wouldn't work anyway. I've been in churches (not for their reason) and found eventually you simply cannot go there. It might work for a number of years even-- although wouldn't for my kids right now. But can you pretend you believe something you see as folklore just to help people value developing their intellect? Seriously?
The Obamas received criticism from the right wing (as a way to find fault obviously) that when they got to DC they put their daughters in an elite private school. Seriously, who can blame them given the way it would have been publicity wise if they had sent them to a public school where Secret Service would have gone nuts. Those are two beautiful young girls, and they would have been catnip for paparazzi.
If we really end up with an educated and an uneducated class division in our country, can anyone not see how this goes against everything our nation was founded to believe important? The only answer I see to it is help the ones who are less educated raise up-- not lower the educated ones.
Doing that is not easy for obvious reasons. Already the right objects to 'interfering' with people and how they raise their children. They knock Michelle for promoting healthy diets for children. Surprising they didn't go after Laura for encouraging reading. Okay, not surprising.
In the end though a more educated people is to the benefit of us all, isn't it? Don't we come out ahead for knowing history, being able to communicate with others, learning science? Maybe we cannot start with adults, but we can with children. Yet many in the right would give up on public education, treat it as warehousing and not mind creating a worker bee and drone class. Good idea?
27 comments:
I may be considered old-fashioned in my thinking, but I believe our public school system has been one of the strengths of our nation. Also true of our Junior and State college and university systems -- yet these systems are becoming less and less affordable for American students.
The future lies in the hands of our youth and I, for one, prefer them to be educated if they're going to be making decisions that effect my life. If only all could have a fire light within them for the excitement of learning.
I have a different impression of The Christian Science Monitor article by Yale PHD John J. Pitnery Jr.. The article was written by the son of a milkman. His main purpose was to stimulate talk about what he thought should be a presidential campaign issue - class divide. He brought up the possibility that military service and church attendance was a solution. I believe it has worked as a leveler in the past. Some of my high school and colllege teachers and professors were the product of GI bill educations. Some came from religious colleges and backgrounds that were instrumental in helping them up the class ladder. Dr. J.J. Pitney Jr. the upper mobility he experienced is becoming more rare.
So you think a draft would solve our intellectual divide? Maybe draft arbitrarily (lottery system) some of your grandchildren but not others and send them off to fight our wars. The only possible way it would work is take girls and boys with the only deferment being inability to physically or mentally serve. No getting off like Romney did to go preach his Mormon gospel in Paris. No college deferment like my husband yours got. None for you and me for being women. Just a lottery of luck?
Boy would I not go for that with the loose talk from people like Romney on using war to solve any problem out there. Listen to him talk about Iran and the big macho talk tries to make a dweeb into a hero himself.
Also I don't want my children to force their kids into a church they totally found repellant for its teaching as some kind of way to get intellectual parity. I can guarantee you from my own experience-- it doesn't change a thing.
I read the article and agreed with the problem enough to post it here. I didn't like the solutions of lowering some to hopefully raise up others.
I do know you learn about different kinds of people in the military. My brother was drafted and he said he experienced racial divides for the first time there and it wasn't him on the good side of where the trouble fell. He's a long way from a racist, one of his best friends is a black man. His first wife was Native American which means his daughters are half. But he didn't see his experience in the military as one that elevated anybody. Since I never served, I cannot say. I did have friends who did though and think what they were when they went in is what they were when they got out.
A lot of guys got degrees from the GI bill. Why can't we do that for everybody? Affordable college if your high school grades are good enough. Elevate everyone through hope they can go on to school if they wish. That won't help those in a drug ridden neighborhood who think selling drugs is a lot faster way to get a good life.
I agree with Joared-- public education and I'd make it all the way through school as far as their abilities and hard work can take them (it was affordable when I went for even those from lower income families or I'd have not had college at all).
Also wise counseling for where a good job can be found for the training you are getting. Education should be a mix of elevation but also of using it later in a way that brings in money. Sorry but that's the practical truth. There are a lot of things one might enjoy studying but then where are the jobs? College is about more than being perpetually educated. It's about using it to benefit self and others.
I also dissagre with Dr. J.J. Pitney Jr.: I think the presidential campaign does address class divide as part of the main focus on our weak economy. For example, Lady Michelle Obama's Oregon State University commencement speech was a showcase for the ideas that are basic to her success in rising from the middleclass working family. Michelle and President Obama lead by example. President Obama's platform would in the long haul level the playing field. All children need a healthy start. That means universal health care and preventing obesity in children. If we fail to give them the care they need, they will cripple the nation down the road.
You know one thing that might help is having neighborhoods with mixes of economic levels. I don't see that happening. It happens out here in the country where kids go to school with those who have a lot more both materially and intellectually at home and those who have almost nothing going for them. Most neighborhoods and hence schools are geared to keep a constant economic level in the area to keep home values up.
The nearby town where my grandson attends school has done some of that with their schools-- dividing them up not so much by neighborhood but by other means. It has led to more diversity than most would see in say a suburb.
When my kids were in grade school, that school bused in inner city kids whose parents wanted them to have that opportunity. I don't know how that went for those kids later. It was hard though as after school playdates took some working.
Very interesting post and the comments following. NOw I have to g read the article!
My first wife was a teacher who taught in a low income housing project school in the late 1960s. The biggest problem for kids back then was lack of parental support and I suspect that is true today. At open house PTA meetings the parents of the kids who were doing fine came, the others were no shows. If a parent doesn't feel it is important to get an education I don't think their children will be raised with a drive to get educated. Charter Schools may help but at least in Washington State, we don't have any. The kids who have parents that read to them while young and push them to do their homework will always do better than those of parents who just don't care or are more concerned with where their next drug fix will come from than the welfare of their children. I don't know how to fix that.
Rain, please read what I said. I said that the military did, in my experience, provide a stepping stone in helping my highschool teachers raise their education and their class level. That was in the past. I am not advocating that putting everyone in a military atmosphere will level all of us to a single class. The military service has nothing to do with ending the trend to our divided state.
The way it worked was through the GI Bill that helped pay for a college education. And please read that in my experience it was the religious colleges that some of my teachers attended that helped raise some to a higher social and economic class.
Rain, I agree that everyone should have access to an education for as far as they are able to go.
These comments have evolved most interestingly with one observation that stands out among others. Class differences could be caused by the low motivation of the lower class. Parents on drugs care more about their next fix than they do in encouraging and motivating their children to get an education.
The arguments against giving handouts to the lower class is their low motivation which will result in wasting the money.
Needed is some fresh leadership ideas. What about bringing some creativity here? Rains idea on community planning bringing together people of all classes living in close proximity is one example. Another example is a leader who sets an example of goals that will make a fundamental shift in Capitalism. A leader who will stimulate ethical creativity that anyone can follow with words like, "...don't focus on what you are missisng. Find a way to move forward in passion and joy." Live for making your life rich with love in your family and circle of friends. Solving the world's problems begins at the grass root of friends and family. Make time for the people you love. On the surface this doesn't sound like a solution for the world and class divide but actually nothing else is.
I read what you said Diane but when someone says something worked in the past, there is an argument to do it again. In my opinion, the examples you cited were very few and possibly had no real change aspect to them. These were people who might've already been on that path. Many used the GI Bill to get educations because they already valued it, not because they learned it was important through someone they met in the military.
I should add that the argument was posed that by having young people of all intellectual levels in the military (which we doubtless have now), it would lift up those who don't value education. Or likewise that being in a church with those who think education comes from the evil left wing and is Satan's domain, might impact the ones in that church. I do not believe it would work that way. There is a saying about the rotten apple which has to be considered also. The child raised to value education might go the other way.
To me the answer is improving our public schools and making higher education available for all without hocking the rest of their lives to pay for it. Good teachers, who are paid enough that educated people want to go into that field, make a huge difference as they inspire by their intellect and they encourage others to see what is possible. When teachers are demeaned (as we've seen a lot of such talk lately as though they don't deserve the pay they get), you can't expect anybody who has an option to go into that field. What do we as a people value?
1. Being "intellectually inferior" does not make a person an inferior person.
2. Leveling implies that some people are lowered as well as that some people are raised against some arbitrary measure.
3. With the technology that we have these days, I see no way that full employment is a remote possibility in our future. Why do we insist that people be employed?
4. I served in the military (reserves) and it really opened my eyes to a reality that was very different for my fellow enlisted reservists. I do think that having everyone serve is a meritorious idea.
5. One of the benefits of public education, as was mentioned by others, is to rub elbows with those who are different from oneself.
Provocative posting and comments!
Cop Car
P.S. Being "more intellectual" or "more educated" does not necessary make a person an officer in a uniformed service. I had a master's degree and had worked toward a PhD when I enlisted.
CC
It doesn't take a college degree to be an intellectual. It doesn't take having one to mean one is. It's more, I think, of a respect for learning-- a lifetime of learning. To me an intellectual is someone with a lot of knowledge and the ability to apply it. Knowledge without the second part doesn't do much good. People can respect education, want it for their children but not have one themselves.
Personally I think an education is a huge plus. I believe that to have a group of people becoming proud of not knowing anything about history, how to write properly, seeing science as more about opinion than fact, and considering themselves better off that way, that's not good for our national future. We have a sizable population putting down public education at all. Where will that lead us as a people?
I do think it's inferior to not have an education but that doesn't mean it requires a doctorate to be educated. People can do it for themselves in many areas-- if they value it. My father-in-law who had only an eighth grade education was a good example of a learned man without a degree.
When a nation is being taken over by dictatorships, the first they the powers do is put down; and if they can, destroy their intellectual class. They do all they can do dumb down what an education means because learning to think for yourself, knowing history and science leaves you more able to use logic to decide their system is not what you want.
As I understand the military, officers have at least some college unless they have worked their way up the ranks and some say that's very difficult to do. I only know what I was told in the past, do not know what it is today, but was always told fraternizing between those below sergeants and the officers was discouraged. I guess it'll take someone who was in the military recently to know if that is still so.
I don't/didn't personally want my children/grandchildren going into the military because I feel we are being run by a group of people who profit from war and from using others (they don't want to fight themselves) as basically cannon fodder. No thanks for giving them more. Currently they say our military is pushing religion, the Christian religion, onto recruits. Now that might benefit someone to do that but I don't see myself as one of those where it would.
Where this disrespect of education is particularly bad is when we have a situation where being uneducated is considered superior and frankly that viewpoint began under Bush or at least expanded as he bragged about getting a C in college and ending up president.
Given how my parents and family felt about an education, how much they pushed the need to learn, I never dreamed I'd see it in this country where education was put in doubt as to its value. We are there. And as long as people feel that way, we'll have more and more leaving school without even a high school diploma. This is bad for jobs, earnings and I think even for wise voting.
I looked for some statistics on how this viewpoint of not valuing education is impacting our country and how many actually drop out. Here's one thing I found-- Report on dropout rates and earnings. 1.3 million drop out every year with some improvement in the numbers but dropout rates are highest among the poor which is pretty much expected but means they stay poor as the chances of earning good money today without a high school diploma is not what it was when my father-in-law quit school before getting one. It's a different era and what it tells employers is likewise different.
Incidentally I don't have a bachelor's degree but a value of education doesn't require one.
Incidentally, before I get slammed for being against the military in general, I have nothing against those who wish to join. I want to see us support our military with full beneifts. I also know there are enlistees from many walks of life. Joe Biden's son was in. I just do not see it as a way to bring classes together. I would be very much against a draft again.
Heck, rural living does a better job at bringing together a wide variety of people without turning over years of one's life to someone else's control. Not that everybody can live in the country either.
Who is to say that people on drugs don't want to see their children educated more than they care about their next fix? Education is the only thing discussed here that can make any difference. Education is very much an answer to the separation of classes in the U.S. The lower class doesn't have a chance until they have an opportunity for education.
There is no way the military can ever be an answer because there is no way those with money will allow their sons to be drafted.
People like myself will not stand for the draft or for church as an answer. I don't normally talk in absolutes but to my mind these are some pretty outlandish ideas. A good education teaches people how to think critically. It gives them the ability to find a way out of poverty. Our immigrants know this. Why can't those who have lived here for generations?
The big problem with the 'uneducated' classes is that they don't have the skills that the educated ones do. They sometimes can't be at conferences with teachers (although some schools are discontinuing that) because they might be working two jobs trying to keep a roof over their heads. I've heard plenty of stories about people like my family where the parents didn't have educations, but they were bound and determined their kids would get one and they checked on homework, monitored grades, helped as they could. Valuing education makes the difference.
One other point is that public education doesn't guarantee mixing of the classes. Neighborhoods are often made up of a lot of people very much alike for economics (except in small towns).
When I was in college, I was a teacher ed major. One of the terms we went around to schools within the Portland school district to be part of classes and observe the differences that economics made in the schools. Keep in mind this was in 1965. It was noticeably different even in quality of buildings which is amazing considering this was one tax rate being the same city.
Single parent homes is another factor in how difficult it is for some kids to get educations.
I remember one of my eye openers in terms of differences in families. Our children's school bused in kids from the inner city. One of them my son liked and we invited him a couple of times to stay after and play. The first time I called to get permission, I asked to speak to a father or mother. The voice came back-- there is no father here. I had been of a mindset that got reset with that.
The country has tried a lot of things like head start but in reality it takes parents being involved to make the biggest difference.
We tend to value what we have and think that lack of what we have is what is holding others down. I wonder about that in regard to education. I'm educated because I'm middle class, not middle class because I'm educated!
Also, I think the actual gains to be had by being educated may not be that clear to those who are not academically inclined. My nephew who never went to college and never even finished high school is making a fortune with his backhoe, digging swimming pools! And he is well satisfied. He is quite bright, and his dad is a college professor, but he never, ever liked school.
Also, I see on this thread a lot of notions about the unworthy poor who need to learn better habits through education. But
I know a lot of people at all levels of society, aside from the 1% or out-of-sight rich, and they know plenty of things. However, too many on the poorer side of the income divide can't get access to what they need. They go around in old clunkers and can't afford to get their teeth fixed, They literally can't afford medical insurance premiums of often more than $1,000 a month and risk bankruptcy if they get sick and need hospitalization. And no, they can't get Medicaid if they have any assets, such as a roof over their heads. And a lot of them are well educated, too, but have lost out in the scramble due to things like divorce, ill health, female gender, minority status and so on.
This state of affairs has forced many into the military or into church groups that help them get by. We who are luckier know we don't need that, and we avoid association with such groups.
But so many have been reduced to survival mode and have nowhere else to go.
I believe that Education should be a mix of elevation. nice post. thanks for sharing your point of view. I somewhat agree with you
I cannot help but feel that the class divide, if not deliberate, is certainly not unwelcome to those on the upper side. In a world of dwindling resources, a refusal to share is not illogical. I have heard otherwise smart and compassionate people say that it might be better to let starving and sick children die rather than increase population pressures on those precious resources; putting education and upward mobility out of reach for the poor can be rationalized in a similar manner.
As politics go these days, I don't see a peaceful or just solution to this problem. Every social class defends its piece of the pie, and money rules. In my corner of the world we have a relatively liberal provincial government that espouses socialist values, but due to pressures of poverty courts the rich and powerful to the detriment of the people they supposedly champion. If they were true to their professed values they would be voted out of office so fast we'd never know they were there in the first place, but as it is they don't act much differently from a political party that openly campaigns on behalf of the rich and powerful. I don't see a peaceful solution.
I have also known a lot of people who have no education and are great people. Really this is about two issues. One poor work habits as was mentioned above. This isn't just for the boss. It's maintaining a tidy and ordered living environment and that doesn't require money. It requires caring. I think if someone doesn't have an education, then the question will be do they see the value in paying for it for anybody else? Are they the ones who are voting down school levies? We have some friends and he basically said since his son was raised, he didn't think it was fair for him to have to pay for educating anybody else's. People like that not only don't want to pay for it but may end up voting for those who have the power to end it. What you don't value or see the value of, you may decide to end. This isn't an end game to not have an education yourself. The end game is to end it for all but those who can afford to pay for private schools.
And Mutelle, it's not all about elevation. I agree. It's about understanding the world and how it operates. People can do that without a school if they are self-motivated. What education should do is teach someone how to do it because education should not end when the person walks out those doors. If it does, it was a failure. It's a lifetime aspect to the life of someone who is curious about what else is out there. One thing about education. There is no real end or time when you know it all and can quit. At least that's how it's been for my life. It's ongoing, organic and rewarding (usually).
Concerning the aspects of education that help to gap the class divide: A list of some mentioned above.
1) Mixed social and economic levels in one class room.
2) Teaching job skills
3) Learning to problem solve in a group of diverse participants
4) Learning how to learn
5) How to apply critical thinking
With my limited exposure to the education of my grandchildren, I observe that criticla thinking skills are non-existant as compared with when I went to high school and college.
4)
Those seem like good ideas to me, Diane and very similar to the kinds of things they were teaching teachers when I was education classes. There are private schools that incorporate them but we have had a public system that went to testing as the main criteria; so it's memorizing and taking multiple choice. That was supposed to lead to no child left behind but it seems to me it's in reality-- all children left behind.
Well said Rain.
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