To cut off your nose to spite your face isn’t partisan – unless you are so poorly educated that you don’t believe you are cutting off your nose. That’s where we are. There are large swaths of American society who don’t have the tools – usually provided by education – to decide for themselves. They are, thus, ripe for what I would call “emotional capture” by clever politicians.
Thomas Jefferson wrote “…Preach…a crusade against ignorance…improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against…evil, and that…kings, priests and nobles…will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance…”
I’m a former professor and can tell readers that we lost sight of the “law for educating the common people”. Instead, we developed a higher education system which is flush with cash (available for bankers, investors, etc…) and has no “law” requiring serious accountability. Over time, they have learned it’s in their interest to treat students as “consumers”. This has eventually produced unqualified teachers (no fault of the teachers) and, thus, an uneducated population where, as Jefferson predicted, “…kings, priests and nobles…[are] ris[ing] up among us…”
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