Is Education Thought Control?

We often come across memes like the one here, ridiculing our educational system, claiming it has no value, or even a negative effect on the individual and on society as a whole.

One thing I notice, however: well educated people don’t send me stuff like this.  It tends to come from tradespeople, e.g., plumbers and gardeners.  Now, I need to add immediately that I have nothing whatsoever against uneducated people; all jobs are valuable and so are those who perform them.  But we need to observe that people who trim our rosebushes and unstop our sinks have no need for higher education.

If everybody thought like the guy who sent me this, we’d have no doctors, dentists, architects, engineers, or lawyers.  We’d have no books or films.  No electronics of any sort, nor any other kind of new product development.  No airlines, no stock market, no corporations.  No roads, bridges, or tunnels.  No judicial systems, and no Supreme Court, meaning no means of enforcing the Constitution. No energy, renewable or otherwise.

A society like this would be indistinguishable from those of the Middle Ages.  Life would be short and brutish.

Let me conclude by commenting on the notion that education is thought control.  I hear this a lot.  Things to the effect that those who have politically incorrect views are punished with bad grades, and learn quickly to conform or suffer the consequences.

I was fortunate enough to have parents who put me through good schools.  And on top of that, maybe I simply got lucky and had teachers, with very few exceptions, who couldn’t give a damn about what I thought about politics, religion, or interpretation of history–as long as I could defend my views in a reasoned and academically rigorous manner.

In many ways, the ability to think critically is at the core of a liberal arts education.   A young person has the rest of his life to focus on a career.  Give him a chance to read the world’s great books, and challenge himself with the questions that great minds have been wrestling with for thousands of years.