This is exactly why I keep beating the drum for critical thinking and media literacy, steeped within a rich liberal (in every meaning of that term) educational program.
I’ve actually begun work on an essay about that exact thing. One that I’ve put off for a very long time because the last time I dared to imply a causal relationship between the rise of Trade-Schools, where you learn to do one thing and one thing well, but have no real education otherwise, and the dumbing down of the electorate, I got shouted down for being “elitist”. But with recent events, I’ve decided to expand on my idea and throw some more research behind it because fuck it, I’m feeling vindicated.
I’m not saying that everyone who attends a trade-school is intellectually incurious; just that a broader understanding of the world is not a part of the curriculum and it’s left up to the students themselves if they want to be a well rounded individual on their own time.
You could throw in some Sam Bankman-Fried’s ‘philosophy’ which was just freshman-level ethics. The tech bro version of deep revealed moral truth is just they would have seen if they hadn’t all dropped out of college before taking their gen-ed classes.
It’s not done yet. I’ve only just written the abstract and started collecting my sources. When it’s finished it’ll likely just go collect dust in a substack somewhere like everything else I shout into the void.
I write this stuff because if I don’t, I’ll go mad. But I hardly expect it to get widely distributed.
I’m not saying that everyone who attends a trade-school is intellectually incurious; just that a broader understanding of the world is not a part of the curriculum and it’s left up to the students themselves if they want to be a well rounded individual on their own time.
I read “Shop class as soulcraft” a while ago. I highly recommend it. I don’t have a problem with trade schools per se. Not everyone is cut out for white collar work, and there is no shame in doing other work. Smart people are required in skilled work that isn’t at a desk, IMHO. Also, I object to what university has become, and that’s essentially treating it as a trade school!
But if I were to have my ideal situation, it would be this - starting early, children are taught to question things and given a sound framework to base that on. By the time they are in high school, everyone should be able to easily spot a logical fallacy. This is not hard stuff. It’s also not airy-fairy stuff. It’s an essential life-skill, like learning to balance your checkbook and manage a household budget. This would be woven into nearly every class, where possible.
By the time someone leaves high school, whether they go to a trade school, or uni, or directly to a job, or to be a homemaker, they should hopefully be equipped to discern the wheat from the chaff and be able to use this skillset for life.
I think the major roadblock would essentially be Republicans. They basically want obedient workers, and they want people to fill their churches. Raising a set of citizens that are questioning the claims made by everyone, including qons, and who are able to spot the logical fallacies constantly employed by corporations and by Republicans would be a threat to the qons.
I agree completely. Trade-Schools are as good or as bad as the person attending. You’re going to have people like my best friend, who went to a tradeschool for bio-tech lab assistant, but reads constantly and is generally well versed in critical thinking. And then you have people like my brother-in-law, who’s a damn good Welder but doesn’t know, or care, about the wider world around him and just believes the words of whoever happens to agree with him.
Critical thinking is the most basic skill that needs to be reinforced in a democracy. But you need knowledge in order to participate in a proper dialogue, whether it’s political, social or economic. Knowledge that doesn’t come from learning how to weld good.
I agree. Which is why I think it should be done throughout K-12. Even homemakers that never went to trade or uni should be well-versed in this. It’s just as important as being able to manage a household budget.
It can of course be employed throughout uni, too…right now, I think it is for certain tracks, but I’m almost 100% that someone can get a masters or PhD in engineering and still somehow never really have a good grounding in critical thinking. I think it is how you get some of these people getting a degree, and are probably highly competent in narrow areas and have a high IQ, and yet, become denialists when it comes to pretty basic things like evolution and climate change. Because they are basically intellectually defenseless against people employing logical fallacies, they fall prey to complete nonsense.
