A time to fix things, and a time to ….
Higher Education as Privilege Laundering
What if We’re the Bad Guys Here? – David Brooks – NYT (link to archived article)
The discussion by the Reddit/SlateStarCodex folks are hilarious, horrified by this “Conservative” David Brooks. They struggle to comprehend how their class could have unfair advantages, and are not very much interested in any case.
If education has merely become a way for privilege to perpetuate itself, then I am beginning to feel about it like I feel about the Hollywood strike. The Studios are dealing in bad faith and are trying to force a bad deal, hoping to bankrupt writers so they are forced into a bad deal. The writers feel likewise. I, for one, hope they are both successful in their duels to the death.
When do we try to fix things, and when do we just let them destroy themselves?
We do the best we can first, because we understand the results of rejecting the Word of God.
We can’t and shouldn’t force these things, but we need to be ready to build a better world. Because we are going to be the only ones doing so.
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
E.C.
August 6, 2023
Yeah . . . I have a friend who’s been involved in the Hollywood strikes. She was a victim of the BYU faith destruction process, and has gone her way into the world bitter and angry and very, very woke. I got together with her and other long-time friends last week and they were discussing the strike, and how unfair everything was for creators, and I sat there silent, thinking, “Maybe the writers are having a hard time because no one wants to be preached at about the Latest Woke Religious Tenet. Maybe the studios are corrupt. Maybe the best thing for Hollywood’s writers and studios would be for this strike to destroy both of ’em.”
This same friend comes from a highly educated family (her father’s a PhD who currently teaches biology), but who grew up poor as her father struggled to finish his schooling. She’s super driven and ambitious, but in all the ways that will make her progressively more unhappy. And all I can do is watch, and live a saner, poorer, more relational life, and hope she’ll come to herself before it’s all too late.
One thing I’ve struggled with is education. I live next to a university, and it’s genuinely hard to admit that I don’t have so much as a proper high school diploma to masters’ students, who look at me askance. Continuing not to ‘get educated’? Blasphemy! But then I see how poorly their education prepares many of these people for reality, and how much money they waste wandering from major to major, and how none of their classes teach them critical thinking skills, and I feel less bad about my decisions in life. At the very least I know what kind of things I want to do and am preparing myself to do them without going into ruinous debt.
G.
August 6, 2023
The Church obviously believes that some of these institutions are salvageable, or at least that it would not do to publicly show a lack of hope in their salvageability.
I personally do not believe in their salvageability. Or at least, it would require faith in a particular type of miracle and I have not spent any of my limited time trying to develop faith in that.
21 Behold, my son, I cannot recommend them unto God lest he should smite me.
22 But behold, my son, I recommend thee unto God,
Eric
August 7, 2023
“And the people began to be distinguished by ranks, according to their riches and their chances for learning; yea, some were ignorant because of their poverty, and others did receive great learning because of their riches.
“Some were lifted up in pride, and others were exceedingly humble; some did return railing for railing, while others would receive railing and persecution and all manner of afflictions, and would not turn and revile again, but were humble and penitent before God.
“And thus there became a great inequality in all the land, insomuch that the church began to be broken up; yea, insomuch that in the thirtieth year the church was broken up in all the land save it were among a few of the Lamanites who were converted unto the true faith; and they would not depart from it, for they were firm, and steadfast, and immovable, willing with all diligence to keep the commandments of the Lord” (3 Nephi 6:12-14).
I’m not suggesting that we’re quite at this point yet, but I can see us heading in this direction.
I’m also not bothered by the idea that Hollywood is headed toward a collapse, requiring the film industry to reinvent itself. But I’m not at all confident that whatever comes next will be any better; it will likely have a lot of the same people involved, and they will likely not have learned the lessons they should have.
bruce g charlton
August 7, 2023
It’s several decades since the US higher education/ employment system could honestly be described as even *attempting* to approximate to a ‘meritocracy’ – but I guess it makes the upper class feel better about their rank nepotism and top-down-managed status-allocation, if they continue to pretend it is still the middle 20th century.