Weekend Economists Wild, Wild, World Roundup February 17-19, 2012

[Demeter]

8. Does College Make Us Less Equipped to Change the World?

http://www.alternet.org/story/154091/does_college_make_us_less_equipped_to_change_the_world?page=entire

WELL, GIVEN THAT CHANGING THE WORLD IS NOT PART OF THE PURPOSE, NOR THE CURRICULUM, UNLESS ONE STUDIES SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, OR GETS RECRUITED BY THE CIA OR SUCH....

...those of us who’ve made it through college are encouraged to feel like we’re something special. And it’s no doubt true that a university education confers certain intellectual (if not always economic) advantages. By the time you’re handed your BA or BS, you’ve sharpened your critical thinking skills; have learned to see big pictures; can write a decent essay on command; don’t feel lost in a museum, library or concert hall; and might even know enough of a second language to navigate the subway and get yourself to the nearest hostel. Furthermore: it’s called “liberal education” these days because generally, the more of it you have, the more liberal you tend to be.

All good and worthy stuff. But the more time I spend around political progressives, the more convinced I am that when it comes to doing good retail politics, our fancy educations get in the way almost as often as they help us. Specifically, there are things we picked up back at the Old U — biases, preferences, habits of mind — that are so reflexive we long ago lost any awareness of them, but that we’re constantly tripping over whenever we try to present our ideas to the rest of the country.

It sounds weird and counterintuitive, but in my work with progressive organizations, I’ve noticed some specific ways in which the kind of thinking we learned in our classrooms actually makes us kinda dumb politically. Here are a few places college grads often seem to get led astray by their own educations....