this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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[–] someguy3@lemmy.ca 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

It's not just higher education. They're coming for K-12 with their voucher system to send kids to religious schools.

[–] specwill@mastodon.social 18 points 1 year ago

@someguy3 @ilovecomputers The entire modern right can be traced back to a desire for segregated schools. This is the core mission, everything else was a way of shifting a voting block to enable it. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/

[–] Sharpiemarker@feddit.de 29 points 1 year ago

"76 percent of conservative Republicans parrot whatever they're told by conservative media."

There, we just said the same thing.

[–] gabuwu@beehaw.org 26 points 1 year ago

I have to be honest this is honestly terrifying rather than being funny. It brings back memory of Pol Pot, Khmer Rouge and that regimes persecution of those perceived to be well-educated, from those who wore glasses to those who spoke foreign languages due them making an association with those things being a part of the Bourgeois.

[–] demvoter@kbin.social 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They do crap like this and then bitch when we say republicans are uneducated. It's not elitist to want to read a book and learn, assholes.

these people are cancer.

[–] DanNZN@thelemmy.club 13 points 1 year ago

If they were complaining about the runaway tuition fees crippling people with student debt, they might have had a point.

[–] Uniquitous@lemmy.one 10 points 1 year ago

Surprise level holding steady at zero. Education is poison for Republicans.

[–] Cryst@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Really? Why? What is there reasoning?

[–] Crazytrixsta@beehaw.org 21 points 1 year ago (6 children)

This is speculation but:

Higher education is typically liberal leaning. Liberals tend to be less religious and far more free thinking.

Conservatives are far more religious and illiterate/less educated. Conservatism as it is now is a minority to progressive ideologies (frequently outvoted in populist polls).

To get more power they need more religious and less educated voters to sway with propaganda/media talking heads. Higher ups are certainly pushing the narrative of private education (run by unlicensed teachers; teaching selective conservative values in textbooks) and it’s parroted by every republican voter and their mothers.

An uneducated voter base will equally vote against their own interest. They just don’t know any better. I’ve seen relatives (grandma with Native American heritage vote republican; anti women’s rights/anti Native American rights/anti social programs) vote to harm themselves because fox told them to. Insanity.

[–] HQC@beehaw.org 12 points 1 year ago

Higher education is not liberal leaving a priori. It's just that acknowledging reality and facts, and even just some parts of scientific consensus, is completely incompatible with agreeing with anything the GOP does or says.

[–] Widget@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I suspect fear and uncertainty plays into it a lot too.

The world is changing quite quickly. Boomers got to live through the boom of the 70's, and younger people keep being told about some fictional utopia of the "good old days." Whatever they jobs they used to do are either automated or irrelevant now. The white cis male power dominance is eroding, and with it a lot of the social advantages they used to get for free are going away.

So, things are getting worse, and they're scared and want to do something about it. The problem is, a lot of these people have a zero-sum mentality, where to improve their own standing, they must do so by harming someone else's standing. The idea that things can be better for everyone with no one losing out just doesn't exist there.

Obviously that's not true, but if you try to convince them of that? Well, you're just trying to trick them so that you can take from them. It's an us vs. them mentality. And you surely don't want your kids to join the enemy's side, so you do your best to make sure they're raised the "right" way. And if your side wants to harm you? Well, as long as the others are getting hurt more, it's still a good thing, because now you're getting ahead of the others.

[–] deathmetal@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 year ago

Boomers got to live through the boom of the 70’s

Might be a typo there. You probably mean the 80s and early 90s. The 70s were pretty grim.

[–] deathmetal@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 year ago

Higher education is typically liberal leaning.

You can see why they would oppose it then.

[–] parrot-party@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

But if they didn't vote Republican, how are they going to own the libs. Sure they're struggling to pay bills and sure they'll probably just die if they get sick, but what's more important is that trans people get harassed /s

[–] norb@lemmy.norbz.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think "higher education is typically liberal leaning" but rather as you learn more about the world, and how to think critically about it, you realize that most conservative ideals are not in the best interest of most people. They are actually in the interest of those already in power and/or with wealth.

It's kind of like that saying that nothing removes prejudice faster than travel (or something like that, I'm paraphrasing from memory here).

[–] TechyDad@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

Also, the whole "liberal indoctrination" of colleges is only a half truth. Do people who go to college come out more liberal? Yes, but not because the colleges are indoctrinating them.

Let's say you've lived in a small town all your life. Everyone you know is pretty much the same. You know very few people who are different so stereotypes abound.

Then you go to college. You start meeting some of the people you had stereotypes of. They don't match what you thought "those people" would be like. Your stereotypes break down and instead of thinking of them as some scary Other, you see them as actual people.

When you go home, everyone back at home hasn't met the people you did. They make the bigoted, stereotype filled comments that you once would have echoed. Except, now those comments have faces attached to them for you so you object to them.

To your parents and the people in your small town, you've changed. They blame the college for "indoctrinating" you, but in reality it is just that you were exposed to different people and viewpoints.

[–] Cryst@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you for the explanation. This doesn't really detail the reasoning as to why higher education is bad for America.

[–] Crazytrixsta@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

It’s republicans saying it’s bad. Because it changes the perceptions of people. Usually those perceptions reveal to people that conservative values are just the wrong way.

As in it’s actually a good thing to listen to foreign peoples viewpoints immigrants aren’t evil monsters they actually boost economies more than homegrown civilians. Bigotry is actually a bad thing. religion has been the largest cause of death in history and isnt really what’s needed to help people tax breaks for the rich doesn’t help poor people etc

When people have access to higher education, they gain skills to think freely and not just parrot what authoritative figures tell them. That’s why conservative republicans say higher education is bad. It puts them in the wrong and lowers their voter base. This is just a simple explanation but should get the point across.

[–] emi@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 year ago

Conservatives just like their myths about America, Race, and Gender more than learning the realities as they don’t align with their beliefs.

[–] bobthened@feddit.uk 5 points 1 year ago

Yes of course they do. I imagine the stats would be similar in most countries. There are two types of conservatives:

  1. The uneducated/ignorant, they choose conservative ideology because they are confused by different people and are afraid of any change they can see happening.

  2. Those who have financial incentives. They know that their ideology is wrong and stupid, but they just don't care. They are only interested in gains for themselves and their family and cronies. Also known as the "fuck you I've got mine" types.

Everyone else is just some combination of the two.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that both of those types would be against higher education. The uneducated/stupid are afraid of educated/intelligent people, and are confused when someone they know comes back from college changed from how they were when they left. The ones with a financial incentive are smart enough to know that education generally results in people becoming more left-leaning, and they also know that enough left-leaning people in a population can cause genuine political change – change that might hurt the bottom line of the rich – naturally they want to avoid that.

[–] funkyb@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

stupid is as stupid does.

[–] DeweyOxberger@vlemmy.net 1 points 1 year ago

To quote Carl Sagan: The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

[–] MrComradeTaco@lemmy.fmhy.ml 1 points 1 year ago
[–] acacia@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Ah yes, education. The great scourge of mankind.

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