Exactly. I was going to post that our “Culture” isn’t quite as monolithic as being able to assign a value that we do or don’t value education.
I’d say that college educated people DO value education, and in large part, college educated-adjacent people do as well. By that I mean that college educated people and people who either went to college for some term, or who have relatives/children who are college educated tend to value it as well.
So much so, that for many of them, having a degree, or working toward a degree is a prerequisite for potential marriage partners. And it’s clearly a prerequisite for the jobs they aspire to as well. And I’d wager that in general, educated people hang out with other educated people.
But there’s a large segment of the population that isn’t educated, and doesn’t really see the point. Now how to change that, I don’t know.
To answer the OP: I’d say that society often claims to value education, but in fact sneers at it.
Using math as an example: It’s rare for people to value a mathematics-minded person, in fact, this can actually lead to bullying by peers or get one derisively labeled a nerd.
In fairness, “nerds” don’t get bullied for their math skills but for what is often a lack of certain social skills. I went to school with a guy who was a top student across the board and also a top athlete. Nobody bullied him because he got straight A’s in math.
How are you going to educate people who don’t appreciate the value of education?
Streaming TV isn’t on “the interwebs”? Could have fooled me. When I say “publicly funded television”, I don’t mean just the TV you can pick up with bunny ears. You can look at the BBC/Discovery deal, for instance.
Coincidentally, I just finished John R. Thelin’s A History of American Higher Education so I have some historic perspective on the issue.
In 1900 Yale was still the largest college in the country and it had less than 1000 students. State universities were very small until after WWI and had enormous non-graduation rates. Their ranks were largely children of the business class. Not until the GI Bill helped veterans after WWII did ordinary people expect to go to college, and it wasn’t until then that more than half the population graduated high school. College as an expectation is so recent that it happened in my lifetime.
For most of that short time, people came to value college. It was aspirational and achievable and generally more necessary as the economy switched over to office and service jobs.
Then, as Americans do, we overdid. A college diploma replaced a high school diploma as a marker, often in places where it added no real value. Business degrees are by far the most conferred and the conventional wisdom is that they are useless. That created yet another line in society, as if it needed one, making non-degree jobs looked down upon, with the unintended result that basic vocational training also diminished. And a college degree is worth less if everybody has one rather than just the elite 5%. What’s the value of education then, on either side?
The growing differences in attitudes between those with degrees and those without is interesting and important, but I’m not sure how much education itself is the cause. We don’t know if college kids are a self-selected group who already had those attitudes. The educated population includes people who went on to college over a period of many years and who have gone to to different jobs, housing, and lifestyles than non-educated people. Maybe the results of education are the primary factor, not the education itself. Maybe a program of vocational training, to do the heavy work of climate change mitigation, say, would provide the money and satisfaction that high-paid secure factory jobs did in the 50s.
Mostly I’m saying we can’t compare the current era in education very easily with the past because the conditions are almost totally different. Comparing the present to a “Golden Age” always gives bad results.
This mindset (which I agree is common) is very alien to me.
My father works with his hands. His father worked with his hands his whole life. The number one thing my father tried to instill in me was the idea that if I work hard at my education, I could have a better life for far less work.
That’s a very good point, and you’re right. Many of the college educated people I know view their formal schooling as a series of hoops they had to jump through to prove that they’re employable. I think that’s a very toxic way to think about education. The Ben Shapiro “go to an Ivy League school so you get a fancy diploma but don’t listen to anything they tell you there” school of thought.
This is a good point, and again one I’m not sure you can do much about. You see this as early as Martin Luther.
ML: I have translated the Bible into the common tongue so that you can all read it for yourself. After all your interpretation can be as valid as a priest’s!
Anabaptists: Hey, we read the Bible and here’s how we interpreted it
ML: Holy shit! That’s not what I meant! You people are guided by the devil!
Yeah, a pet peeve of mine is the increasing view that college is less about education that broadens the mind, and more a vocational school that might help land a job. It’s lead to encountering a lot more educated people with poorly thought-out views.
Worse, the idea that it’s just bullshit employers use to filter resumes and that the average college grad is no more qualified to do most entry level work than someone who spent those 4 years at home playing video games, the college grad just has a “piece of paper”.
I know college taught me tons of stuff. I don’t know what these “just a piece of paper” types dud for 4 years. Maybe cheatedand did the bare minimum for 4 years, graduated with a low C average, and then blamed the school for not "making " them do better?
Societal oversight of childhood education with no opt-out.
Parents can have input into raising their children any way they like - can pour as much nonsense into their heads as they like - but they don’t get the only say in it, because - and hear me out here - children are not their parents’ property, and society has a duty of care to them that supersedes anything else. So I’m not saying the parents get censored, but they should be prevented from isolating their children, as well.