Humans are hard-wired to learn. While learning styles may differ, the desire and ability to learn is not attached to a particular race or gender. From birth, we begin learning about others, our environment, cultural norms, and ourselves. Our survival depends on our gaining a sufficient level of education. We make decisions based on our understanding of what we have learned. In most of the world, a good education is connected to personal success and human progress. Education makes us harder to manipulate, less gullible, less vulnerable, and better able to solve problems, innovate, and to accomplish difficult tasks. Education gives us the foundation to ask new questions and to challenge assumptions. These are at the heart of human progress. Humans have the ability to learn throughout our entire lifespan, and I think that’s an incredible gift. I know the old belief isn’t true that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” because the research shows that you most certainly can!
But we’ve all known folks who claim that they don’t value education, particularly formal education, because they never pursued it. I’ve found that some who lack formal education feel threatened by people with earned degrees to the point of hostility towards the educated. This is increasingly true of young men who are opting out of college while young women are earning college degrees in greater numbers. Not surprisingly, the level of hostility towards educated women in this country is growing. These educated women desire educated men to marry, but in the absence of college educated men, they will settle for a cat. College is important because it represents a willingness to learn.
It is true that a degree doesn’t necessarily mean one person is inherently smarter than another, but it does mean that the person who pursued education likely has obtained greater knowledge in science, history, math and problem-solving skills. Whether because of a lack of opportunity, laziness, or intellectual challenge, less than 40% of Americans over age 25 have obtained a bachelor’s degree (U.S Census; 2023). That means the majority of Americans lack the basic knowledge and critical thinking skills gained through higher education and that should worry us, particularly since we have a president who claims to love the uneducated and it is the uneducated who are overwhelmingly supporting him. It is their lack of education that makes them vulnerable to his lies and accepting of his bullying, his ridiculous protestations, and his corruption. They easily fall prey to the cult of personality above substance.
History has shown us that people who are greedy for money and power, usually men, have used violence to withhold education as a means to exploit and control others. We saw it when slaves were not permitted to learn to read nor write. We saw it with the Taliban forbidding girls to attend school, and sadly we are beginning to see it here again. Republicans are relying on the anti-education policies under the leadership of Donald Trump as a means to maintain power and expand their wealth. We know that Trump was a poor student by all accounts and is clearly an anti-intellectual leader. Republicans are using his lack of education and intellectual laziness to exploit his sociopathic instincts. They know he makes decisions based on what will bring him money, loyalty oaths, and praise rather than the data presented by experts. In fact, experts have been replaced by quacks and other incompetents who lack professional credibility and experience.
Educated people are aware that leaders who ban books, discard or rewrite historical narratives, trade religious myths for science, devalue expert knowledge, ignore or fabricate data, defund University research, ban foreign students, defund educational aid and seek control over curriculum and hiring decisions have an agenda to destroy actual education. We can see that the desire of Republicans to siege permanent control by plunging more Americans into national ignorance is a fool’s errand and won’t end well for the nation. We are watching the brain drain in real time as other nations welcome our best researchers and graduate students as well as the brilliant foreign students we are rejecting. This country will find itself in intellectual decline within a few years.
Someone needs to tell Republican leaders that ignorant people make bad personal choices. Ignorant people know too little to contribute much by way of the innovation and problem solving needed to fuel an economy. Ignorant people turn to violence rather than reason to solve conflicts. Ignorant people can’t oppose destructive public policies. Ignorant people rely heavily on emotions, conspiracies, gut feelings, and myths rather than numbers, science, data, and history to make important decisions. And ignorant people feel so threatened by those with education, that they attack them, contributing further to the brain drain gripping the nation. Think about what that means for the rest of the world when you have an increasingly ignorant American population with a huge army and nuclear weapons at their disposal. Suddenly, we become a clear and present danger to the rest of the civilized world.
Before we allow ourselves to jump off the educational cliff to satisfy the egos of mediocre wealthy white men, we need to say “no”. Our votes in the midterm election as well as in our local school board elections, city council elections, our state elections are our collective way of returning to a nation that values and rewards education. In fact, we need to do a lot more than we did before Trump, not less, to ensure that our children, our grandchildren, and our nieces and nephews get a world class education. We need more men in k-12 classrooms to understand, mentor and encourage boys in their educational journey. I’m not saying that everyone needs a college education to be successful, but every citizen needs a strong basic education that includes science, math, reading and history. Women are attracted to intellectually competent partners with the potential to earn a good living. So, beyond high school, everyone needs either a trade or a college degree that won’t be made obsolete by AI.
As citizens, our commitment to education must be stronger than ever. And it must be unwavering. The time has come to rid ourselves and our country of these anti-education leaders before it is too late.