The Educated Ignorantti

One of the most disappointing developments of the last 150 years or so has been the education of people. Once was a time when barely 1% of the population could read or write. It can be true to say not much development went on back then. One century went by much as the last one. But clever folk there were who nevertheless managed to rise and dispel some of the ignorance they encountered.  They were 'Elite'. 

For most people life, the world, reality was what they could see from the bottom of a deep hole of ignorance. 

That old 'Elite' actually knew a thing or two. They had worked out the value of knowledge. They had discovered ethics, right from wrong, morality and even manners. They gave us Chivalry, not to mention the combined knowledge and technologies of the past few millenia. Pretty good for far less than universal writing facility.

Much of science came from learned churchmen, for example, and from the wealthy 'amateur'.  Universities started, developed and spread, mainly to cater for those churchmen and amateurs and a growing number of 'Professionals' Then in modern times it was thought that the better we could all be educated, the better the world around us could be made. We could all grasp reality a bit more firmly. Even 'know God' a little through His works.

By the turn of the last century, around 1900, after almost a millenia of Universities, a good 2% of the British population - for example - could expect to go to a University and pretty well all children could go to schools, at least up until early teens.  The effects of education started to be felt. 

One of the first really major discoveries was made by the ladies who 'saw' with female maths, that men had a strangle-hold on university education to women's disadvantage. One and a quarter of the two percent at Uni were men !! Only 3/4 of a percent were women. ! While the difference was just 1/2% it was blown up to become 'discrimination'.  

98.75% of men didn't get a Uni education: 99.25% of women didn't. There was no statistically significant difference. As if that mattered. By the 1960's the women were furious.  Changes had to be made !! 

So, 'positive discrimination' was born, and what an ugly baby it became. The Unis became the 'empower' place for feminists and women in general. Not just clever women either. Along with the need to lower standards to allow in young women who could barely tie a bow in their hair, so to did the doors fly open for  young men who were just as thick and unable to score. 

But as the 'gap' closed and the lady-numbers grew, so did the need to cater for these women. That is, discriminate in their favour almost everywhere. That meant new rules. Simple manners and maturity would not do, as they were 'patriarchal'. Fewer young men felt any urge to go back 'grown-up kindy' with its ridiculous, infantilising rules.  

The result of all this.....?  The standard of maturity has fallen alarmingly. The sorts of matters 'taught' have expanded to meet the level of expectation of the very dim.  In recent years men have been driven out almost altogether.

Some might argue that the 'hard' subjects - Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, even Maths - have escaped such childishness and indoctrination that are common in the 'softer' and very squeltchy subjects - women's studies, gender studies, finger painting, queer studies, coloured-folk studies (no white folks studies as yet), toe-nail art etc, - but perhaps that is because they have a tightly disciplined and necessary indoctrination of their own for which there is little room for additional doctrines.

And pretty well all courses are politicised. For politics is all, today. 

We have an elite. 

And that elite follows the political prescriptives.

Joseph Pierce was supping a pint and talking of some things he has noticed.

The Arrogant Ignorance of the 'Well-Educated'

Many moons ago I wrote “The Wisdom and Wickedness of Women” in response to seeing a bumper sticker declaring that 

“Well Behaved Women Do Not Make History.” 

 http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/arrogant-ignorance-well-educated

Recently, sitting in traffic, I saw this very same bumper sticker on the car in front of me, beside another which declared the following: 

“What you call the Liberal Elite, we call being well-educated.” 

The juxtaposition of these two stickers, carefully selected by the car’s owner to teach me a lesson, set me thinking. I might even say that it taught me a valuable lesson, though not the lesson that my neighbor in the car in front of me meant to teach me.

Let’s take the second bumper sticker first. Clearly designed to offend other motorists, it is supremely supercilious and extremely arrogant. 

We, the average Joe, whoever we may be, are not as “well-educated” as the royal “we” driving the car in front of us. 

This pompous “we,” who is presumably a she, presumes that anyone who disagrees with her is poorly educated, whereas she, of course, is well-educated. If we were as well-educated as she, we would agree with her.

To be fair to her, she is basing her presumption on data that shows that those who are “well-educated” tend to vote for the Democrats whereas those who are less “educated” tend to vote Republican.

Joe is American. In Oz we would call her a Labour personage. Socialist. And it could just as easily be a chap. 

She votes Democrat because she is well-educated. We, who are presumed to be Republicans (because we are presumed to be stupid), complain that those who are better educated than us (and are therefore better than us) are part of an elite.

The problem is that her education is not as good as she thinks it is. 

If she was educated in our secular system, she would have learned nothing whatsoever about theology, presuming that, if there is a God, he, or probably she, agrees with us. If he or she does not agree with us, he or she can go to hell. And, of course, we can tell God to go to hell because he or she is made in our image (we are not made in his/hers) and we can do what we like with him or her. 

In short, we can treat God with the same arrogance and disdain with which we treat our neighbor: 

“What God calls sin, we call being well-educated.”

If she was educated in our secular system, she will know nothing of philosophy, or, if she does, she will believe that there was no philosophy worth taking seriously before René Descartes. She will know nothing of the philosophy of the Greeks, of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and still less of the great Christian philosophers, such as Augustine or Aquinas. Insofar as she’s even heard of these people, she will presume that they did not know what they were talking about: 

“What the ancient philosophers call error, we call being well-educated.”

If she was educated in our secular system, she will know nothing of history, or, if she does, she will know it only from her own twenty-first century perspective, or from the twenty-first century perspective of those who taught it to her. 

History is not about learning from the people of the past, their triumphs and their mistakes, but is about sitting in judgment on the stupidity of our ancestors, who are presumed to be unenlightened, or at least not as enlightened as she is or her teachers are. 

“What the people of the past believed to be immoral, we call being well-educated.”

If she was educated in our secular system, she will know nothing of great literature, or, if she does, she will have misread it from the perspective of her own twenty-first century pride and prejudice, or from the proud and prejudiced twenty-first century perspective of those who taught her. She would not think of trying to read the great authors of the past through their own eyes because, living in the past, such authors lack the sense and sensibility which she has. 

“What Jane Austen calls pride and prejudice, we call being well-educated.”

Once we understand what being “well-educated” actually means in the deplorably illiterate age in which we find ourselves, we are not surprised to find these two bumper stickers side by side. One who is “educated” in this way, will obviously believe that “well-behaved women do not make history.” 

What we, the uneducated, call bad behavior, the liberal elite call being well-educated.

To be “well-educated” is to be ignorant of theology, philosophy, history and the great books of civilization. It is to believe that we have nothing to learn from the Great Conversation that has animated human discourse for three millennia. It is to treat our neighbor in the car next to us with supercilious and scornful contempt, presuming that he is stupid because he is not as “well-educated” as we. It is to treat the greatest minds and the most brilliant writers in history with contempt because they are not as “well-educated” as we. 

In short, to be “well-educated” is not merely ignorance, it is the arrogance of ignorance.

 Joseph Pearce is quite a clever fellow. He's a writer in residence and director of the Center for Faith and Culture at Aquinas College in Nashville, Tennessee. His works include: "G.K. Chesterton: Wisdom and Innocence," "Literary Converts: Spiritual Inspiration in an Age of Disbelief," "Tolkien: Man and Myth," and "Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile

My advice to anyone is do not go to University unless to study 'hard' subjects, or to attend his classes.

Every aspect of our life today has been affected. Hysteria rules.

That 'deep hole of ignorance' I spoke of that existed long ago? We hauled ourselves out. Then we dug another one and lowered our young into it.

Having won the battle for minds in the Universities, the dark forces that ruin are now after the hearts and bodies of our children. 

You might care to catch up with Kevin Donnely who had things to say in the Oz Bar, but I had things to do in the cellar.

Kevin Donnelly: 

Radicals have taken over schools, universities and the media to impose politically correct agendas

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/radicals-have-taken-over-schools-universities-and-the-media-to-impose-politically-correct-agendas/news-story/842818fc3e6fe5db88e970c0784618b3?nk=1dc4d9f3f2a05effc85fce79fb2efc8a-1498827329

There’s no doubt that Western cultures — ­especially those associated with the Anglosphere (including the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, America and Canada) — are bastions of freedom, democracy, high standards of living and scientific progress and innovation.

And it’s clear what makes Western culture unique. Compared with military dictatorships and oppressive regimes across Asia, the Middle East and parts of South America and Africa, Western nations share a Westminster style of parliamentary democracy and a political system committed to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.

We also share a legal system that guarantees the right to a fair trial, innocence until proven guilty, and the right to be judged by one’s peers. Add Christian-inspired values such as sanctity of life, free will, and a commitment to social justice and the common good and it’s clear why so many millions of refugees are flooding to the West.

Best illustrated by the Enlightenment, Western culture also has developed a unique approach to science based on rationality and reason.

Instead of superstition, witchcraft or hearsay, Western science is based on logic and what can be proven to be true or false. It should not surprise that all of the most influential breakthroughs and developments in medicine, science and technology since the Industrial Revolution have occurred in Western nations.

Campion. The only decent University in Oz?

Sydney’s Campion College is an example of how Western culture has also developed a unique approach to education, which also explains why it is so successful. The purpose of education, instead of being utilitarian or promoting self-interest, is committed to knowledge, wisdom and truth.

Cardinal Newman’s ideal of a university education is one that is “disciplined for its own sake, for the perception of its higher object, and for its highest culture”. While professional qualifications are important, a broad education including disciplines such as history, literature, music, art and languages are vital if one is to be truly educated.

Notwithstanding the strengths and benefits of Western culture since the late ’60s, it has been attacked by both enemies foreign and domestic.

You will have to read on yourselves. I have barrels to move. Follow the link above. 

I would not recommend any parent send a child to school today.  They are even more feminised than the Universities, and controlled almost totally by marxists intent in destruction.  They will poison your child. Maliciously. But that is a subject for other evenings in the bar.

Drink up.

Educate yourself.

Pax.