"It is increasingly obvious that there remains an invasive prejudice to sincere intellectual pursuits and education. I would like to know what horrors in an "Ivy League" education exist. It is not the education that assaults our sensibilities, it is the individual person doing so. Assaults to logic and reason are constantly being launched by those with good, mediocre, poor, and no education. Being educated necessitates an understanding that our thought process is not the only acceptable one. Remember the words of a sage of communication, Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is us"!
You seemed to have missed my point in pursuit of another. No one intimated the “horrors” of an Ivy League education or education in general. We should all be so fortunate to obtain or desire an Ivy League indoctrination. However, I’m sure that the oncoming drive for free college tuition won’t apply to these schools as we all need a few elitists.
I was more specifically reacting to a news commentator who had the clairvoyance to determine a debate candidate’s feeling about his own debate performance and then speculate with significant certainty as to the public’s expected response. Maybe “Ivy League education” was not the proper term. The “Beltway” or “Media Elite” may be less offensive to the sensibility of some. (I refuse to use the term “Main Stream Media”)
My point, which I may have put too succinctly for some, is that those who choose to think for themselves should always question the talking head media’s “clarification” of what we just witnessed whether that media is MSNBC, CNN, Fox News or the New York Times.
It is interesting to observe how you were able to take a comment about the media and their attempts to shape public opinion and turn it into a condemnation of education.
Education is not unlike other human pursuits – education for the sake of education, religion for the sake of religion, government for the sake of government and yes, (as sacrilegious as it may be)even art for the sake of art without the higher purpose of fostering wisdom serves little except to keep us occupied and segregated. When we turn these pursuits into sacred cows, the ultimate result is bad art, bad government, bad religion and yes, bad education.
I do agree with you on several points. We live in a time of the glorification of ignorance. We could discuss the causes and effects at great length but that will have to wait for another day. The Pogo cartoon character was a bit before my time but that ol’ possum was dead on. In a free society, the enemy is always us.
I’ll finish with a quote from Pogo’s pal, Howland Owl, who said – “Don’t take life too seriously, son. It ain’t nohow permanent.”
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