Is it a lack of education?

Reading Emptywheel this morning, on the thread called "Race and the Public Option" (http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/09/13/race-and-the-public-option/), commenter Rayne pointed to a couple of graphs that were interesting.

First One:



from here:
http://www.juliansanchez.com/2009/08/03/symbolic-belief/



Second Two:





from here:
http://www.edgetech-us.com/Map/EduLvls.htm



So my questions are, "Is the Racism of the South really just an extension of the lack of Educational opportunities for that area?". And then, "Is the lack of Educational opportunities in the South intentional, to keep 'the base' blithely ignorant?".


I personally believe that a "free"/"affordable" College education should be available to anyone that wants one, so i admit i have a somewhat personal bias. Maybe we should be indoctrinating their youth. By trying to teach them how the world actually is. Americorps could work wonders for the South. 2 years of Domestic Service after High School, preferably in a different state, with money to pay for College from Americorps. I admit it's hard to conceive of opening the minds of the tea-bagging contingent... but are the youth doomed to follow in the footsteps of their forbears?


What do you think?



Edited to remove weird italics thing...

leaders. Sarah has the most education of the three, with Beck and Limbaugh only having HS diplomas.

has been to a number of schools (was it five or six?), so she's probably familiar with the concept of diversity. Has she ever shown herself to be an outright racist?

Are either Beckkk or Limbaugh Southern?

He's just one of those former alcoholics/drug-addicts that got clean largely/partially through a re-found commitment to faith, leading him to become a puritanical persecutor of the "less holy"...meaning anybody who doesn't live up to his rigidly-defined and twisted morals. What is insidious about Glenn Beckkk is that he never talks about his faith or his past and tries to come off as a rational populist who is just like the rest of America.

None of this should be taken to construe a criticism of recovering drug-addicts, recovery programs, religion or whatever it takes someone who feels that their life is out-of-control to regain inner peace. When any of those things lead you to feel that you're a suitable inquisitor of the lifestyles of other people though, you might be Glenn Beck.

because he only has a High School diploma.

when the party is in power but when a party is out of power, they are percieved to be because they are still high profile. Their position is not based on the outcome of elections. Clearly, he's not right now, but go back 5 years or so and it wouldn't be difficult to make a case that he was.

It was Cheney & Rummy.

Parker was asked to produce a sentence with the word "horticulture". This was her response:

You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think.

I rest my case.

Others have noted talk radio's great successes not having college educations, and this ties into this whole theme, I see the problem being the CULTURE which LACKS RESPECT for education and higher learning.

I'm sorry if I'm stepping on toes around here, but our society in which the "jock" is the "hero" and the guy who studies is a "nerd" is at the heart of many of our problems...

so how do we go about changing that culture?

Is there a way to make getting an education seem sexy?

I was a nerd and freak in HS so i know whereof you speak...

When I was a kid and the space race was on, scientists and engineers were the heroes. For a brief time in the eighties and early nineties when a computer science degree was the ticket to a six figure income, nerds got laid.

But this is something that has to come from the media and the country's leadership; we don't anymore have a celebrity scientist. I believe Carl Sagan was the last.

Making smart cool again is a tough row to hoe when parents won't even let the president talk to their kids.

as or more important than those of educated persons. Kind of like Colbert's "gut". "is it true? that's what my gut tells me"
Are communism and nazism the same? Sure!
Hey, what do those "scientists" know about global warming that we don't?
"Obama's got more czars than the soviet union"
Obama is a socialist/communist/nazi.

what education level do you think the right is appealing to?

which is fine with me. But I wonder how much time they spend educating themselves and reading a variety of things about the world, from science to philosophy. Maybe they can't afford a college education, but why can't they afford to go to the public library and spend time learning about the world?

I think the anti-intellectual attitude of some of these idiots is pure arrogance and the belief that they have nothing to learn about the world that isn't in the "good book".

Higher education is fast becoming a playground for the children of the economic elites. I've always believed that anti-intellectualism is simply one of the ways the poor vent their frustrations with the upper classes.

Or if you pay for your first year and maintain a 3.0.

Its helped some, but its not had the effect one would have hoped for.

but the trick would be to get them out of state. Maybe make all State systems somehow conglomerated?

:shrug:

Out of stater can get almost the same scholarship if they pay for their first year. At my university, tuition is about 1700 for the semester.

"free"/"affordable" does not equate to $1700 a semester (+rent, utilities, food, school supplies, extras). College loans have become a scam. The rural poor in the South is synonymous with "undereducated". These folk really can't afford to go to college unless it is free or nearly so. How much would tuition be on that "first year" you're referring to?

:shrug:

But you are correct that room and board is their responsibility, but it would be any way even if they weren't in college.

College loans for room, board, and school stuff is not a scam if your scrimp, choose your majors wisely, and do well. Get a part-time job and live thrifty, and you might not even have to take out loans.

Its much tougher on students who support families, though.

Even back then I said you had to be suspicious of a party that was against education. Seems their success depends on the ignorance of the masses.

to fear-mongering?

The more you know about the world around you, the greater your capacity to controlyour environment and the less likely you are to feel insecure and liable to be subject to manipulation.

Keep them DUMB!

I know some pretty smart people who don't have a high school diploma - and some pretty dumb ones who are PhD s.

Continuing education is the key - and most Southerners without satellite radio do not hear any adult education outside of rightwing newspapers and the LimHaniBeck-a-thons on the local radio.

FWIW, my son scored in the 95th percentile of his TCAPs last year - that means he is smarter than 95 percent of the rest of the country - not just Tennessee. Public education of school-aged children isn't that vast of a problem here - it's the lack of continued (adult) education their parents have.

On edit: To prove my point - look at the first graph. There are more people in the South who believe Obama was born in the US of A, but a lot of people in the South are unsure. What that tells me is that a lot of Southerners think he probably was, but they get little proof from the rightwing media here to totally make that complete assumption.

I wasn't really talking about HS education as much as i was Continuing Ed, so thanks for making that more specific. And i think the Media across the country is spiraling toward RW dementia. Of course, as well, smart people can be born and raised anywhere. They just have more advantages in places like the Northeast.

I think figuring out a way to get affordable, fast internet service to rural areas is pretty key here too. I live in a No Service zone in MA and have been forced with the dialup vs. satellite dilemma. It really sucks.

the TCAPs are the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program. That means it was designed with the TENNESSEE schooling in mind, it is NOT a "nationally normed" test.

That's one of the scandals of NCLB is that states are rigging their "state exams" to make their kids seem smarter than they really are.

I am NOT saying that your child isn't smart, I'm sure he probably IS, it's just that that "95th percentile" IS against other Tennesseeans - not against "national public schools".

There is a systemic, societal sickness that pervades America. Simply counting people that have gone through X number of years of indoctrination is easy to do and potentially misleading. How many years spent in the system is not as meaningful as what is learned during that time.

The steady, multi-generational degradation of education in the U.S. has produced tens of millions of "educated" people with no understanding of anything that matters. Education has been replaced with vocational training and cultural indoctrination. We do not teach kids how to learn (except those that attend "right" schools, of course). There are the exceptions that overcome the system of conformity and obedience, but the vast majority go through school without learning anything beyond how to submit to authority.

I believe that you would find another correlation in your map if we could quantify "respect for authority", IOW, being good sheeple.