Opinion | The Mystery of White Rural Rage – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
In this piece Prof. Krugman admits that he is confused. He says he just doesn’t get it. I doubt if he will ever read my comment, but here is what I posted.
Prof. Krugman doesn’t get it because it is beyond his imagination that their education can be so bad that…well, here’s Thomas Jefferson.
“…Preach…a crusade against ignorance…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…”
Prof. Krugman and his friends at Princeton, Harvard, Yale, etc., can’t imagine how these voters’ education can be so bad that they can be fooled – or that they have been fooled so long that they are just MAD. But it is that bad, bad beyond most peoples’ imagination. (So, it’s not just beyond the imagination of elite professor.)
And here, in a nutshell, is how it got that bad.
First, universities are, for the most part, corrupt. “Corrupt” in the sense of values. (The famous sociologist David Riesman wrote about this in his 1980 book, “On Higher Education: The Academic Enterprise in an Era of Rising Student Consumerism”. See quotes from it on my blog inside-higher-ed.com)
This corruption leads to getting grants to graduate American PhD’s – with no real oversight. These go on to teach at schools that are supposed to train teachers. Those teachers don’t learn. Their mainly rural and poor HS students don’t learn. And Prof. Krugman wonders what’s going on – when it’s right in front of his nose – if he will only look. He can start with the top ten Econ. Depts. Most of their grads aren’t even research capable. It’s a slippery slope.
To get an idea of how hard it is to convince people that our university system is corrupt, read this reply to my comment above. Nothing I said in my comment is contradicted by the success of research. There is no reason why you can’t be a great researcher and a dishonest person when that dishonesty serves your interest. (See “The Purloined Proof” above for an example.(
Universities are not corrupt. Your charge defies logic. There is no single entity entitled ‘university.’ There are many universities across every area of study, occupation, political point of view, and philosophy. From Oral Roberts University to U.C.Berkeley, each a unique organization, culture, and range of disciplines. University research improves your quality of life Mark! The scientific research carried out at our major universities has led to some of the most commercially successful and life-saving discoveries of the past century, including the laser, vaccines and drugs, and the CRSPR mRNA to reduce the spread of contagious diseases.