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> Is education no longer “a great equalizer of the conditions of men,” ... but instead a great divider? The article is very "feet on the earth", it reviews exi
by dsign 5y ago
> Is education no longer “a great equalizer of the conditions of men,” ... but instead a great divider?
The article is very "feet on the earth", it reviews existing data and arguments, and generally advocates for a "no" as an answer to that question.
But what if education were a great divider? What if--like wealth--the education gap were self-reinforcing, even across generations?
To the well-educated, that seems far-fetched, but it's easy to find examples across the world where some people choose to believe or live according to X, which results in less emphasis put into "modern" education, which in turn makes it easier to keep believing in X, and so on.
On the other side, learning skills A, B and C may require a considerable investment in time and money. Right now is not that bad, but just imagine for a moment that ten or fifteen years of education were needed for job K, which pays three orders of magnitude more than the jobs that people who live according to X have access to.
Still, death would seem the perfect equalizer (not education), except if expensive life-extension is added to the mix...
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoI think it's cultural, but not perhaps in the way you describe. Parents who believe in education often produce better-educated children. Reading to them when they're small, helping with homework when they need it, talking about college even when they're young, and just not letting them give up on school. I suspect that, at least to some degree, that is transmissable - that is, it tends to produce children who, when they are adults, will value education for their children.