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To solve future problems and avoid war we need more educated people, not less.

• ekianjo 9y ago
  Having a paper is not the only means to get educated these days. Oh and your assumption that education somewhat prevents wars is completely false. Societies like pre ww2 Germany and Japan were full of well educated folks.
  • z3t4 9y ago
    A quick search gave plenty of articles saying higher education prevents war. For example "Among independents, education is highly related to support for the war. Those with only a high school education give clear majority support, but support declines as educational level increases." http://news.gallup.com/poll/7768/war-support-education-gap.aspx http://news.gallup.com/poll/7768/war-support-education-gap.a... "The results provide evidence for both the grievance and stability arguments, providing strong support for the pacifying effects of education on civil war" http://www.uky.edu/~clthyn2/thyne-ISQ-06.pdf http://www.uky.edu/~clthyn2/thyne-ISQ-06.pdf
    • ekianjo 9y ago
      Very poor data to support your point. > There is a modest decline in war support as educational levels increase from high school or less, to some college, to college graduate (with no postgraduate education). However, the largest gap occurs at the highest level, between those with a postgraduate education and those without. Only among the postgraduate group is the majority opposed to war, 56% to 40%, while the other three categories all show majority support. Postgraduates almost don't count since there are so few of them in a civil society. So virtually no difference between high school level and college graduates, which does not support your point.
    • icelancer 9y ago
      Do citizens vote for war? All of our leaders are very well educated, by American standards, yet war and police action persists.
  • verbify 9y ago
    > Societies like pre ww2 Germany and Japan were full of well educated folks Yes, and these educated folks opposed the Nazis. The parts of [Weimar culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_culture) that were the centre of art, music, literature, poetry, mathematics, and science was the parts that did not become Nazi. Out of their Nobel Prize Winners, many of them were Jewish. Out of the places that participated most in that culture was Berlin (famous for the [Berlin Circle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Circle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Circle), also the area that voted least for the Nazis). The people who were cultured were less likely to be Nazis. The gay clubs in Berlin were later shut down by Nazis. Nazi conservatism was to some extent a backlash against the permissive and flourishing culture - and they associated Jews, gays and Marxists with that culture. I'm not saying cultured people can't also be barbaric - they can. But it's also not true that somehow the most cultured place in the world was hiding a dark secret - the parts that were cultured were not the parts that instigated the backlash.
    • ekianjo 9y ago
      You seem to conveniently ignore the mass of german intellectuals who supported the national socialist regime, as well as industrialists and artists. Even outside Germany the Third Reich had its share of supporters among elites. Lets not falsify History by pretending only stupid people were nazi supporters.
      • verbify 9y ago
        There were intellectuals who supported the Nazis, there are intellectuals who currently support the alt-right and believe in establishing ethno-states. But it's negatively correlated.
        • ekianjo 9y ago
          > But it's negatively correlated. Negatively correlated? We'd need hard and reliable data to compare and make proper judgment here, and it is going to be difficult since almost everyone involved is not neutral. The problem is that as humans, we tend to believe that the ones who support different parties/ideologies have low IQ compared to our own parties/ideologies. It is far from being obvious because intelligence and education is usually widespread among various groups and currents of thoughts. As individuals it is actually very dangerous to think in this way, because it leads us to underestimate our adversaries wherever they are.
• arpa 9y ago
  What is an educated person? How do you measure education? Why do you think universities should have a monopoly of higher education?
• fsloth 9y ago
  The 'education' in this context is a system of indoctrination in a pseudo-cult like atmoshpere ("there is nothing more glorious than doing pure science in an accredited faculty and if you disagree you are an idiot"). The atmosphere is not due to malfeasance, but a combination of professional management mixed with borderline asperger short sightedness and deafness to human needs as psychological beings of flesh. This specific system has very little to do with war or piece - it's only causal link with the society at large is it's funding - how much, by whom and by witch terms. This is not to say all academia is problematic - but too large areas, as claimed by this article, clearly are.
  • z3t4 9y ago
    I'm not saying all education systems are perfect, I'm sure they can be improved. And problems are not solved by education alone, you need a engineering/scientific mindset, that you only get from higher education, or acquired by self study and inquisitivity. The opposite is ignorance, which can be a bliss, but it will not help solve conflicts and problems.
    • icelancer 9y ago
      >> you need a engineering/scientific mindset Another citation required. Liberal arts and philosophy majors aren't useful in spreading world peace? Ancient historians would strenuously disagree.
      • eli_gottlieb 9y ago
        Ancient liberal arts and philosophy majors have generally considered war one of the highest, noblest human callings.
    • peoplewindow 9y ago
      Communist dictators throughout history have been highly education engineers. I don't think you can say engineering degree = peace.
    • noobly 9y ago
• icelancer 9y ago
  Citation needed that we need more "educated" people (for what definition of educated?) to do those things, and that the American system is even remotely decent at doing those things. Given the trajectory of our country's political efforts combined with ever-higher enrollment in college, the correlation at least doesn't look so good.
• ralusek 9y ago
  The identity politics shoved down the throats students at universities across the country are going to create wars, not prevent them.
• chiefalchemist 9y ago
  Not true. Not if they are educated to be ignorant. The US was / is involved in 5 to 7 "conflicts." Edu isn't helping to stop that. In fact, anecdotally, I see educated people part of the problem. They have become less open minded, less willing to change position because their info was incomplete. We need thought, and people willing and able to use it. Not education.
  • pdfernhout 9y ago
    From James Loewen's "Lies my Teacher Told Me": http://loewen.homestead.com/ http://loewen.homestead.com/ "Over ten years I have asked more than a thousand undergraduates and several hundred non-students their beliefs about what kind of adults, by educational level, supported the war in Vietnam. ... By an overwhelming margin - almost 10 to 1 - my audiences believe that college-educated persons were more dovish. ... However, the truth is quite different. Educated people disproportionately supported the Vietnam War. ... These results surprise even some professional social scientists. If you look at other polls taken throughout the course of the Vietnam War, you'll see that the grade-school educated were ALWAYS the most dovish, the college-educated ALWAYS the most hawkish. ... My audiences are keen to learn why educated Americans were more hawkish. Two social processes, each tied to schooling, can account for educated Americans' support of the Vietnam War. The first can be summarized by the term allegiance. Educated adults tend to be successful and earn high incomes -- partly because schooling leads to better jobs and higher incomes, but mainly because high parental incomes lead to more education for their offspring. Also, parents transmit affluence and education directly to their children. ... The other process causing educated adults to be more likely to support the Vietnam War can be summarized under the rubric socialization. ... Education as socialization influences students simply to accept the rightness of our society. American history textbooks overtly tell us to be proud of America. The more schooling, the more socialization, and the more likely the individual will conclude that America is good. ... Both the allegiance and socialization processes cause the educated to believe that what America does is right. Public opinion polls show the non-thinking results. In late spring 1966, just before we began bombing Hanoi and Haiphong in North Vietnam, Americans split 50/50 as to whether we should bomb these targets. After the bombing began, 85 percent favored the bombing while only 15 percent opposed. The sudden shift was the result, not the cause, of the government's decision to bomb. ... We like to think of education as a mix of thoughtful learning processes. Allegiance and socialization, however, are intrinsic to the role of schooling in our society or any hierarchical society. Socialist leaders such as Fidel Castro and Mao Tse-tung vastly extended schooling in Cuba and China in part because they knew than an educated people is a socialized populace and a bulwark of allegiance. Education works the same way here: it encourages students not to think about society but merely to trust that it is good. To the degree that American history in particular is celebratory, it offers no way to understand any problem -- such as the Vietnam War, poverty, inequality, international haves and have-nots, environmental degradation, or changing sex roles -- that has historical roots. Therefore we might expect that the more traditional schooling in history that Americans have, the less they will understand Vietnam or any other historically based problem. This is why educated people were more hawkish on the Vietnam War. ... Students who have taken more mathematics courses are more proficient at math than other students. The same is true in English, foreign language and almost every other subject. Only in history is stupidity the result of more, not less, schooling. Why do students buy into the mindless "analysis" they encounter in American history courses? For some students, it is in their ideological interest. Upper-middle-class students are comforted by a view of society that emphasizes schooling as the solution to intolerance, poverty, even perhaps war. Such a rosy view of education and its effects lets them avoid considering the need to make major changes in other institutions. To the degree that this view permeates our society, students automatically think well of education and expect the educated to have seen through the Vietnam War. ..." See also John Taylor Gatto's "The Underground History of American Education" and Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States".