THE EDUCATION GAP [T, 1-23-18]

There is a dangerous gap in our world, and I don’t mean [only] a store at the mall.

The single most consistent factor in whether a person supports President Donald Trump is level of education. There are exceptions, of course, but in general, the higher your education level, the less likely you are to support this president.

I learned that from reading a survey done by the military in which they learned that officers were ten times more likely to disapprove of President Trump than were enlisted men. The difference was education level. We have the most highly educated military officer corps in the world.

Of course, it is educated people who do surveys, so Trump supporters claim that results like that are biased or it is “fake news” or some other work-around, because they do not trust education. Because they are left out of the good things that come with education, including the use of reason and facts rather than emotion to make decisions.

One of the biggest gaps among people in general in our society is education. There are big gaps in income and privilege, but they rely in great part on the education gap.

Being left out makes people angry. Because they are not educated, not trained to reason or tell facts from fantasies, their anger can be easily misdirected against those who are actually on their side. They can be convinced that the short-term emotional satisfaction of venting anger is the best they’ll get.

They want leaders who are just like themselves, angry, angry at anyone and everyone who is different from themselves.

This gap widens as technology pushes forward, technology that requires education. The haves and have-nots are increasingly the educated and not-educated. This does not bode well for the future.

The predator class has been actively working for almost forty years now to widen the education gap, because that gap gives them their hold. Democracy depends on an educated electorate. The predators want a democracy in which “all are equal, but some are more equal than others.” They try to destroy public education through underfunding, and vilifying teachers and driving them out of the profession, and by supporting alternative schools--so called “Christian” schools where the only Bible taught is I Peter 2:18, and “home” schools where students learn how to fill out work sheets but not how to think.

I like to end these little reflections with a wry twist or a note of hope. So I’ll end by saying that if we don’t destroy ourselves or the planet in the next hundred years, there might be a possibility we can steer this ship away from the ice berg. That is about as hopeful as I can get.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com