Today, I read this piece, http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/arrogant-ignorance-well-educated
While I share his 'contempt' of the type of people that would be most likely to sport such bumper stickers or post such memes on their Facebook, I disagree with him based almost solely on his biases that he allows to bleed into his writing.
Despite his obvious neo-conservative Judea-Christian bias, he's got one thing right, today's education(secular or not, though PUBLIC education is even more heinous) leaves the students assured of what they know and blind to their own ignorance.
However, his bias drove me to respond to this 'idea' that being liberal means you must be more 'intelligent' because you are more likely to be 'well-educated'. Intelligence and education, in the context of today, do not necessarily go together. Being 'well-educated' today does not automatically translate to intelligence. In fact, it more likely translates to easily controlled and gullible. In order to 'succeed' in 'education' today, all one must do is parrot back what a particular 'educator' wishes you to absorb and memorize. Offer a view counter to a teacher's and see how quickly your GPA drops. It is rare, today, to find an educator who encourages and delights in counter views to their own and relishes the opportunity, not only to educate the student in the truest sense, but to have the opportunity to be enlightened by a new view they may not have considered or encountered.
A friend's daughter made the comment that 'today's high school student is as intelligent as the great minds of yesterday(like Ford, Lincoln, et cetera) because we have all this information given to us.'
Essentially, they are taught not how to think, but instead what to memorize and are convinced that THIS is intelligence. They fail to realize that intelligence is marked by four very persistent factors:
- Doubt about one's own 'knowledge'(intelligence recognizes that it may not be so intelligent)
- Questioning everything one knows and is told(intelligence recognizes that no source is infallible)
- Anticipation of opposition for the opportunity to fine tune one's own knowledge of 'truth'(intelligence recognizes that the only way to know anything is to put what it 'knows' to the test)
- Lack of fear in considering that which is counter what one 'knows'(intelligence is not threatened by being proven wrong)
Intelligence is critical, always, first and foremost. Not like a critic of a restaurant or movie, but in the classical sense. Without judgment, only with the desire to determine the 'truth' of what is being presented, no matter where that leads or what it changes for that critical mind.
What you call well-educated, millenia of precedent calls arrogant and willful ignorance and blind acceptance of what you are presented with, provided it is presented by those you view as infallible, ie, authority.