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Thread: Education and Politics

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    Quote Originally Posted by Walt View Post
    The Democrats have been strong supporters of trade schools. The Republicans not so much.
    I appreciate the laugh Walt. Tip of the hat to you sir.

    (So you thank the OP for saying Republicans are against higher education, because it makes people vote more liberal, and want to push people towards trade school. But now you claim Democrats are actually strong supporters of trade schools? Too funny.)

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    Quote Originally Posted by cawacko View Post
    Are you suggesting that Democrats don't use demagoguery to appeal to their base of voters?

    Until more recent times Republicans regularly won the votes of those with college degrees (Democrats won those with advanced degrees).
    No, of course they do, but not to the degree of the right, nor as aggressively, can’t say I recall many Democrats personally labeling Republicans as “evil” or “traitors.” Besides, as I said, the left doesn’t have an entrenched media dedicated solely to attacking Republicans

    When was the last time the GOP won the majority of college educated voters?

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    Quote Originally Posted by ThatOwlWoman View Post
    I agree 100% with that bolded bit. We desperately need to remove the stigma of trade schools and fund them fully, and encourage people who have no interest in academics to consider a trade instead. Just look at the lack of quality daycare providers to see that this is a needed investment in our future.
    If you ever deal with tradespeople in a country with a well developed trade school system, it really is night and day. America is way behind in trade schools.

    We do well with community colleges, so you can get lower academic education at any point in your life. We sometimes try to extend those into trade schools, but it is not even close. Even the high schools that claim to be trade schools really are not compared to what happens in other parts of the world.
    Daniel Patrick Moynihan said it best, "You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts."
    Paul Begala, "Politics is show business for ugly people."
    Stephen Colbert, "Reality has a well known liberal bias."

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    ThatOwlWoman (05-13-2022)

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    Quote Originally Posted by ThatOwlWoman View Post
    I agree 100% with that bolded bit. We desperately need to remove the stigma of trade schools and fund them fully, and encourage people who have no interest in academics to consider a trade instead. Just look at the lack of quality daycare providers to see that this is a needed investment in our future.
    Is a good idea, but difficult in the U.S., it would involve tracking kids at an early age, and there aren’t many American parents who want their child to labeled as less than capable. Besides, with the Unions diminished, many of those trades don’t offer the financial benefits they once did and are less attractive

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    Quote Originally Posted by archives View Post
    No, of course they do, but not to the degree of the right, nor as aggressively, can’t say I recall many Democrats personally labeling Republicans as “evil” or “traitors.” Besides, as I said, the left doesn’t have an entrenched media dedicated solely to attacking Republicans

    When was the last time the GOP won the majority of college educated voters?
    We can get into a whole discussion on racial demagoguery used by Democrats but that's really for a separate discussion.

    I don't know off the top of my head the results for college educated voters (with or without advanced degrees)

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    Quote Originally Posted by archives View Post
    Is a good idea, but difficult in the U.S., it would involve tracking kids at an early age, and there aren’t many American parents who want their child to labeled as less than capable. Besides, with the Unions diminished, many of those trades don’t offer the financial benefits they once did and are less attractive
    I agree that in the U.S. parents would not care for the German system. Kids who perform well academically are steered towards university prep while still in h.s., while kids who don't perform as well are steered towards the trades.
    "Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals." -- Mark Twain

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    Quote Originally Posted by archives View Post
    Is a good idea, but difficult in the U.S., it would involve tracking kids at an early age, and there aren’t many American parents who want their child to labeled as less than capable. Besides, with the Unions diminished, many of those trades don’t offer the financial benefits they once did and are less attractive
    There are all kinds of trade jobs that pay six figures. I know this board is full of millionaires but for a lot of 'regular folk' I don't think making $100K is all that bad.

    The real problem with discussions like this is it all revolves how do people vote. Then as partisans we decide we like better those who vote like we do. But if people actually put that sh*t aside, not every kid is cut out for college nor does every kid have to go to college. People can forge their own paths in life and live healthy and fulfilling lives without a college degree (and the massive amount of debt it can take to achieve).

    Edit: I guess I could be considered somewhat of a hypocrite because if you ask my five year old what she's going to do at 18 she'll tell you go to USC. (I don't tell her this but I'd let her go to Stanford if she were accepted.) So I couldn't fathom her not going to college short of her dropping out because she was some amazing entrepreneur. But on the whole not every kid has to go that path.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Matt Dillon View Post
    Such gaslighting crapola.
    You can review the data yourself, if you don't believe me. I provided the link.

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    Quote Originally Posted by T. A. Gardner View Post
    That's because "higher" education has changed. Today, many go to college only to get thoroughly stupid studying under radical Leftist, crazy, whack-a-doodle professors. They attain a level of stupidity not found in nature by the time they graduate. So, nothing really has changed. Idiots are still voting Democrat.
    That's certainly been a common talking point among right-wingers, eager to explain away the strong correlation between educated societies and left-leaning societies. But one fascinating thing about the phenomenon is that it existed even before the correlation held true at the individual level.

    For example, as recently as the 2012 election, Republicans were doing better with those individuals who have college degrees. Romney won 53% of college graduates, and Obama won just 43%. Yet, even as that correlation favored Republicans at the individual level, it favored Democrats at the societal level: the most educated states and communities went for Obama.

    Then, as now, Massachusetts was the most educated state, whether you measured by percentage of people with a bachelor's degree, percent with a degree from a highly competitive university, percent with an advanced degree, or just in terms of the quality of high schools in the state (it has dominated NAEP scores for decades). And, even with Massachusetts being Romney's home state, Obama manhandled him there, just as he did in every other highly-educated state... a margin of well over 20 points, in fact.

    I find that really interesting: that Romney could do better with college-educated people at the individual level, while being completely uncompetitive in highly educated states and localities. Why?

    There's a critical-mass issue there. When you have a critical mass of well-educated people in an area, the voting tendencies of both the educated and the uneducated in that area tend to move left. Or, to put it the other way, when there's a critical mass of ignorance, both the educated and the uneducated in the area are more likely to vote Republican.

    I suppose some of that may come down to the fact that liberal politics are based around collective action, and how appealing collective action is going to seem depends in large part on who you see around you. If you're surrounded by ignoramuses, you're more likely to figure you're better off going it alone, and you'll tell the government to butt out. If, on the other hand, you're surrounded by well-educated people, you're more likely to think banding together on something is a way to make the whole better than the sum of the parts.

    To put it in really simple terms, imagine you're in a gym class and you have a choice of playing a team sport like basketball, or an individual one like distance running. If you look around you and see a bunch of uncoordinated, unmotivated slobs, the idea of your success being dependent on them is going to look less attractive and you'll go for the individual sport. But if you look around and see a bunch of strong athletes, the team sport may seem like a better way to motivate each other and come together for something special.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Walt View Post
    Very accurate. There is a racial and gender disparity too, but uneducated white males vote Republican, and extremely educated white males vote Democratic. White men who expected to get through life based solely on their whiteness and maleness, are overwhelmingly trump supporters.

    The other slight disagreement is your statement about trade schools. The Northern European countries have high levels of higher education, AND high levels of trade education. America has amazingly little formal trade education compared to many foreign countries, and the Republicans are hard core against adding more. Trade education allows young people without social contacts to learn a trade, which the Republicans hate. They want jobs to be based on whiteness and maleness.
    I don't have an issue with trade schools if done right. But I think a lot of the push towards it in the US is coming from the right precisely because they hope that it's a way to enhance employability of the young without opening their eyes to things that might get them voting Democrat.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mina View Post
    You can review the data yourself, if you don't believe me. I provided the link.
    Sweeping generalizations are exactly that. The entire premise is false and designed only to give Democrat intellectuals (or those that may view themselves as such, like midcan5) a little endorphin rush from a "feely good".

    Anyone that would waste time even trying to study something like that is to be disregarded entirely.

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    Quote Originally Posted by cawacko View Post
    We can get into a whole discussion on racial demagoguery used by Democrats but that's really for a separate discussion.

    I don't know off the top of my head the results for college educated voters (with or without advanced degrees)
    And one irrelevant to the topic or my response

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    Quote Originally Posted by archives View Post
    Is that why Trump “loves the uneducated?”

    Less education also makes one more vulnerable to demagoguery, and with the rise of talk radio plus cable infotainment, the right seems to excell at employing such for political gain
    Yes. The kind of demagoguery Trump engages in is a dangerous game for a politician, in that it either works or it backfires badly -- in the latter case, not just failing to sway someone your way, but driving them away. And that's because it's based on statements that sound idiotic or mendacious to those who know more about the world. So, the uneducated are the key audience, and the educated are a problem.

    Take, for instance, Trump's 2016 campaign, where perhaps the single most important theme was scaring white people about a phantom crime wave, which supposedly was driven in large part by immigrants. Now, anyone who had taken a decent sociology class or just got into the habit of reading reputable newspapers had a bit too much context for that scaremongering to work. We knew that, in fact, murder rates in 2016 were near record lows, and that immigrants actually commit murders at lower rates than native-born Americans. So his demagoguery not only failed to scare us into supporting him, but actual drove us away, by making him seem dishonest. But for those who lacked that context, it worked.

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    Quote Originally Posted by T. A. Gardner View Post
    Well, he should have because it's true. Education =/= intelligence. Look no further than law schools for proof of that!
    Poorly educated people are quick to point out that education doesn't equal intelligence. But this is a strawman argument here, since I never mentioned intelligence. The first mention of it in the thread was your own attempt to rebut a point that wasn't present in the first place.

    Anyway, it's true education≠intelligence. However, the two are related. Education tends to enhance intelligence, an the unintelligent often find it difficult to get an education.

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    Quote Originally Posted by archives View Post
    And one irrelevant to the topic or my response
    It's actually very relevant when you claim people vote base on demagoguery. (it just doesn't bother you as much when the recipients of it vote the way you prefer)

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