NYT's David Brooks blames education for a polarized country

[iconoclastic cat]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/29/opinion/29BROO.html

(snip)

To a large degree, polarization in America is a cultural consequence of the information age. This sort of economy demands and encourages education, and an educated electorate is a polarized electorate.

In theory, of course, education is supposed to help us think independently, to weigh evidence and make up our own minds. But that's not how it works in the real world. Highly educated people may call themselves independents, but when it comes to voting they tend to pick a partisan side and stick with it. College-educated voters are more likely than high-school-educated voters to vote for candidates from the same party again and again.

That's because college-educated voters are more ideological. As the Emory political scientist Alan Abramowitz has shown, a college-educated Democrat is likely to be more liberal than a high-school-educated Democrat, and a college-educated Republican is likely to be more conservative than a high-school-educated Republican. The more you crack the books, the more likely it is you'll shoot off to the right or the left.
(snip)

[Fenris]

1. David Brooks' columns are confusing and pointless.

If his assertion that education leads to polarization is true, which is doubtful, what is his suggestion? That a less educated populace would be less ideological?

[cprise]

3. Why are more educated countries less polarized?

[Mountainman]

4. You are right. He doesn't account for the ditto heads and freepers

The country is divided because most of those who think for themselves are liberal and the rest listen to Rush et. al. Imagine having to listen to Rush to find out what your opinion of an issue should be. He constantly says, "here is the way you people need to look at this" and they do. Thinking people know he is lying his ass off.

[billbuckhead]

2. More right wing propaganda

:puke:

[Ganja Ninja]

5. Brooks says it's the education system and ...

your either with him or against him.

[ecoalex]

6. Education declines, polarization increases

Methinks there is another paradiam operating here. I believe as our national education scores plummeted, and students were shoved out the door with some not even literate, and the ride in religion, we see a major increase of uneducated ideological voters. In church voters are told to vote republican. The ignorant listen to o'really hannity, limbaugh , and think they are hearing truth. Since they do not have the ability to know the truth when they hear it , because of a less proficient education,and peer pressure like the NASCAR clique , we see people duped to believe, or told to be "patriotic" and support policies that have no factual basis. The inability to form an educated opinion, is the result of a less than useable education, due to education buget cuts. We got smart bombs , dumb citizens. More educated people should be able to decern fallicies through deduction, yet some are just ideological. Many well educated people, have done very dumb things due to religious backgrounds.

[Demeter]

7. It's Not Education--It's GREED

Don't go blaming the GOP on educational institutions: most credible ones don't foster the "screw thy neighbor" mentality. One possible exception: the Business schools that produce trash like Bush.

Blame it on the churches that want to transform this democracy into a theocracy, and the greedy monopolists who are exploiting these morons for their own profit.

[Cocoa]

8. where do I start?

That's sucking the air out of every other issue, and inducing the candidates to run orthodox, unimaginative campaigns.

Orthodox? Unprecedented money raised; record money spent; earliest that both nominees were known in U.S. history; unprecedented negativity from Bush campaign.

Is it "orthodox" for a presidential candidate to use Hitler in a campaign ad?


Still, it's worth thinking radically. An ambitious national service program would ameliorate the situation. If you had a big but voluntary service program of the sort that Evan Bayh, a Democrat, and John McCain, a Republican, proposed a couple of years ago, millions of young people would find themselves living with different sorts of Americans and spending time in parts of the country they might otherwise know nothing about.

That's not radical at all. In fact, Brooks no doubt knows, but doesn't tell us, that Kerry does have an ambitious national service proposal.

Why is Brooks stealing Kerry's ideas?


It might even be worth monkeying with our primary system. The current primaries reward orthodox, polarization-reinforcing candidates. Open, nonpartisan primaries might reward the unorthodox and weaken the party bases. To do nothing is to surrender to a lifetime of ugliness.

The only presidential primary in this election was won -- big -- by a centrist candidate. The candidate that DID run the campaign that most accurately be called polarizing LOST big.

[struggle4progress]

9. Translation: "Bush is going to slash spending for education, and ...

Rove asked the campfollowers for ideological support."

[Miss Authoritiva]

10. It's not about education, it's about power.

Brooks cites one study (by Abramowitz) that college-educated voters are more "ideological" but offers no explanation as to why the "more you crack the books, the more likely it is you'll shoot off to the right or the left."

Why are those with more education more politically entrenched? Because however either group of educated elites (the right or the left) defines power, they know they have it and they want to keep it. (And let's be honest here: higher education in the US is treated as a form of "membership," and membership has its privileges.)

Why are those with less education less politically entrenched? Because these "non-elites" know that whatever little power they have is best used to form mutually (but rarely equally) beneficial coalitions. They cannot afford to become entrenched. They have to be pragmatic.

How silly: "To a large degree, polarization in America is a cultural consequence of the information age." No, it's not. It's about power. It's a never-ending turf war.