Friday, February 27, 2015

RIGHT WING FEAR OF EDUCATION: From a former RW nut (now an athiest)

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/rights-fear-education-what-i-learned-former-conservative-military-man?akid=12833.294211.6M0zUi&rd=1&src=newsletter1032515&t=12

I also viewed education with suspicion bordering on paranoia. I came from a rural mining town in Nevada where I knew mostly blue-collar men who neither needed nor wanted a college education. Listening to adults talk they always had a favorite villain: the person who jumped ahead in line and got a job or promotion, only because he or she had a college degree.
I have my own children now, and I know the limits of parenting.  Children heed your example far more than your advice.  It’s painful to watch your children struggle. It was the same for my conservative family who encouraged me to go college. They weren’t able to offer any meaningful guidance or help, and it was not their fault.  First generation college students, like me, face an impossible climb.  If you add in conservative hostility to education, it gets that much harder.
After getting a bachelor’s at 27, I went back to graduate school to study 18th century British literature at California State Hayward.

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