Ruined By Education

Gerry makes the following comment

Another brilliant mind ruined by "education". ...

And then, I came across the following comments made by Howard Zinn in his book A People's History of the United States on pp.491-2 in Ch.18 The Impossible Victory: Vietnam, about the perception that the anti-war protestors were middle class people:

But the most surprising data were in a survey made by the University of Michigan. This showed that, throughout the Vietnam war, Americans with only a grade-school education were much stronger for withdrawal from the war than Americans with a college education. In June 1966, of people with a college education, 27 percent were for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam; of people with only a grade school education, 41 percent were for immediate withdrawal. By September 1970, both groups were more antiwar: 47 percent of the college-educated were for withdrawal, and 61 percent of grade school graduates.

There is more evidence of the same kind. In an article in the American Sociological Review (June 1968), Richard F. Hamilton found in his survey of public opinion: "Preferences for 'tough' policy alternatives are most frequent among the following groups, the higly educated, high status occupations, those with high incomes, younger persons, and those paying much attention to newspapers and magazines." And a political scientist, Harlan Hahn, doing a study of various city referenda on Vietnam, found support for withdrawal from Vietnam highest in groups of lower socioeconomic status. He also found that the regular polls, based on samplings, underestimated the opposition to the war among lower-class people.

All this was part of a general change in the entire population of the country. In August of 1965, 61 percent of the population thought the American involvement in Vietnam was not wrong. By May 1971 it was exactly reversed; 61 percent thought our involvement was wrong. Bruce Andrews, a Harvard student of public opinion, found that the people most opposed to the war were people over people over fifty, blacks, and women. He also noted that a study in the spring of 1964, when Vietnam was a minor issue in the newspapers, showed that 53 percent of college-educated people were willing to send troops to Vietnam, but only 33 percent of grade school-educated people were so willing.

It seems that the media, themselves controlled by higher-education, higher-income people who were more aggressive in foreign policy, tended to give the erroneous impression that working-class people were superpatriots for the war. ...

Emphasis Mine

It would appear that the right-wingers are correct: we would be so much better off without the liberal elites, and especially, the liberal media. Without them, we would not be involved in all of these messes just because they want war as a solution to problems. Meanwhile, I will continue my conversion to the dark side by continuing in my Masters' course until I become a psychotic killer.

On a different tack, this is interesting. How does education turn one into a greater supporter of violence? Or is the question really: does a person who believes in violence as a solution more likely to succeed in completing higher education? That is, does the competitiveness and drive needed to succeed in higher education favour those who see violence as a means over those who do not? My personal opinion is that it does.

Success in a Capital society favours those with such a disposition to prefering violence as a solution. An indicator of this is the books by Sun Tzu on The Art of War in any management section of a bookshop.

The academic conclusion is:

• There is only checkable reference to this phenomena quoted by Howard Zinn;
• Any conclusions that I have put forward are to be distrusted because there is no rigourous examination of the evidence

In other words, this is posted for interest only. No conclusion of any weight can be made on this.

Read more!