The Post Truth World of Educated College Kids
by David Robertson, theweeflea:
There is one aspect of the American elections that completely fascinates me. It is the view that has been widely put around in virtually all of our media that the people who voted for Donald Trump were “non college educated”. Largely it is the uneducated white working class who for various reasons, including racism and fascism, but primarily stupidity, voted in Mr. Trump. Thankfully there are those on the Left who are beginning to realise that this is not quite the whole truth.
My issue is with the assumption that college educated means intelligent. It appears as though both in the United States and the United Kingdom, College /University education is more likely to mean indoctrinated rather than educated. At a recent debate in the University of Abertay, Dundee, I was informed by one of the students that the university was “entirely liberal” and did not really permit alternative points of view. To a large degree universities seem to have become places where people are taught what to think, rather than how to think. They have become places where exams are passed and students are prepared for life in liberal society by an unhealthy dose of illiberal indoctrination.
The infantilisation of our students that occurs through this indoctrination is seen in several ways. Safe spaces, hurt rooms, the priority of emotion over reason, intolerance in the name of tolerance, and riots in the name of love, are all symptoms of a deeply immature culture.
This was seen the day after the election when Professors at many universities in the United States cancelled their Wednesday classes in order to help students cope with the apparent trauma of the election results. Students were offered therapy dogs, safe spaces, and even in several instances a cry room complete with colouring books and crayons! In some ways I don’t blame the students – they have been treated like children and then fed a diet of fear, ignorance and post-truth self-righteousness. Little wonder that they crack up when their carefully constructed artificial world falls apart!
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