Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum lit into President Obama at a Americans for Prosperity Tea Party event in Troy, Michigan over his advocacy for higher learning. “President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college,” Santorum sniped. “What a snob!”
Snob? So what did he mean?
“Not all folks are gifted in the same way. Some people have incredible gifts with their hands!” Santorum added. “There are good decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them. Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image. I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his.”Our man Santorum is playing the populist card, of course. He senses a fair amount of resentment in the voting public and is trying to ride that tiger. In the end it won't work, but it's easy to understand why he's doing it.
The problem is that Santorum is only half-right in his analysis.
- What he's saying about working with one's hands is true and I'm not aware that anyone is disputing it. High school is pretty much a universal experience in this country and we've all known plenty of people who would have no interest in a college education.
- His point about liberal college professors and indoctrination is a trickier one. Anyone who tells you academe isn't a leftist redoubt is lying. Whether the liberal professors are actually trying to indoctrinate people is another matter. If you are truly paying attention in college, you quickly figure out the differences between the lessons you are taught and the lessons that you learn. Sure, a lot of people go to college and get "indoctrinated," in a manner of speaking -- my college friends on Facebook are the ones most likely to post tendentious leftist talking points. You can surmise who the conservatives are by watching who doesn't respond to the paeans to Rachel Maddow.
- This behavior among the college educated is less an indictment of college than it is an example of what Harold Rosenberg meant when he talked about the "herd of independent minds." But a college experience doesn't make people think that way. You bring that mindset with you to university.
- Where Santorum goes terribly wrong is at the end. I don't see any evidence that Barack Obama wants to remake anyone as an individual. He's quite ambitious about reordering society, but that's not the same thing. Reordering society is a big deal, but because Santorum makes a claim that the facts don't support, it makes it easy to dismiss the legitimate points he's making.
It's difficult to know if the things that Santorum says are heartfelt or if he's just more effectively cynical than other politicians who play these cards. Either way, the approach has only limited effectiveness. And that's a good thing.
12 comments:
I think there are plenty of hopes in post-secondary education to change young adults and remake them in a liberal image. But the point is the plural. I don't think it's a unified conspiracy, but loads of do-gooding, we-know-what's-best, saving-the-world, liberal professors. The group think that these professors and administrators often show might seem coordinated, but it is easily explained by sincerity of belief on an individual level.
A conservative student can function just fine in this atmosphere if they learn to ask questions and avoid the temptation of trying to save the world. Being a do-gooding blowhard in the opposite direction, however, can make life difficult.
Mr. Dilettante,
Thank you for your post and happy Blogger Appreciation Day!
I actually think probably too many people go to college. I encounter students all the time that have no business being in a university. They aren't thinking at that level, and it dilutes the quality of education for everyone else.
And too many people approach a liberal education (I don't mean that politically) as some sort of job training, which it isn't. If you want that, you should go to a trade school (and you'd probably make more money than I do in a couple of years.) Or, get a degree with the understanding that professional school (business, law, medicine) is in your future.
So I think Santorum is right about the merits of universal college, but for all the wrong reasons. He imagines college professors the same way Occupiers imagine CEOs: as some sort of broad, malevolent caricature of everything he resents, conspiring to reshape the world into something he fears.
It also isn't terribly constructive for him to slag off an entire profession in the name of his bullshit populism, or the universities that constitute major economic engines for vast swathes of the country.
Thank you, Matt!
considering the state of our governance, and how many at the highest levels went to 'the best' schools, maybe we need to elect/appoint a larger number of occupational trades to office, and a lot less of the ivy crew.
but plumbers are stupid, right?
Mark,
great post and happy blogger appreciation/leap day (is this celebrated once every 4 years?)
You said: The problem is that Santorum is only half-right in his analysis.
While that may or may not be true, Santorum was completely disingenuous in what he said about the President.
This is what Obama actually said in his State of the Union Address:
"It is our responsibility as lawmakers and educators to make this system work. But it is the responsibility of every citizen to participate in it. And so tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma. And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country – and this country needs and values the talents of every American. That is why we will provide the support necessary for you to complete college and meet a new goal: by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world."
To turn this into “Obama is being an elitist snob” is not only a stretch – it’s a downright lie. And I think lying is a sin... somebody should tell Mr Catholic.
But your larger point is a good one. It was just plain foolish of Santorum. His point (I think) was to try to rile up a crowd of mostly non-college educated folks by saying that Obama, by his comments about college education, was calling them stupid. Somebody should have asked him, right then and there which of his children he had had to inform just weren't college material. But, while I agree that Santorum made himself look like a stupid and desperate demagogue to most folks, a lot of the people in that crowd were cheering. Back in the real world, a better complaint might be that college costs are skyrocketing so much that less and less people can afford it, and that that is one of the things restraining our economy and country. But Rick Santorum must have thought it would be easier to communicate via right wing dogwhistle political speak than to actually try to educate or make a subtle point. He must not think too much of his supporters. What a snob!
Regards,
Rich
It occurs to me that the university was more or less invented by the Catholic Church.
Rich, I'd not heard of Blogger Appreciation Day before today. It wouldn't surprise me if it is a leap year thing.
Somebody should have asked him, right then and there which of his children he had had to inform just weren't college material.
That's kind of a non-sequitur, doncha think? It's not as if we are talking about lining people up and arbitrarily pulling non-college people out of the line.
Back in the real world, a better complaint might be that college costs are skyrocketing so much that less and less people can afford it, and that that is one of the things restraining our economy and country.
Right. And why do you suppose that is?
Gino, your comment reminds of what William F. Buckley used to say -- he'd rather be governed by the first 50 names in the Cambridge, Mass phone book than by the first 50 names on the roster of the Harvard faculty.
Rich, I just want to respond to your point about costs.
Back in the real world, a better complaint might be that college costs are skyrocketing so much that less and less people can afford it, and that that is one of the things restraining our economy and country.
In my growing up years (I'm 36,) college was considered by people I knew as an unqualified good. It wasn't something to be considered, but something to be attained because it was THE necessary step in between high school and the rest of life.
Similarly, when I taught high school 10-15 years later, people considered college as the thing to do. Sometimes there was a concrete goal in mind, but often it looked more like:
1) Get college degree
2)
3) Get great job; live great life.
There was a kind of magical thinking surrounding college education. And it wasn't just kids who were caught up in it. Parents, teachers and school counselors were on board too. "Sure Johnny hasn't exactly been an excellent student, but he wants to improve himself and college will help him do it."
But it college actually an unqualified good? I don't think it is. I think it is very good for some, useful for others, and an expensive fiasco for many. So the idea that "less and less people can afford it" doesn't strike me as necessarily bad. This might just be sticker price catching up with reality.
If skyrocketing prices can shake up this market that has been soaked in magical thinking, then maybe the system can adjust and start serving its purpose.
it was this 'college as a part of life' attitude that increases it costs.
and sets the environemnt that says govt needs to help make it happen.
how much would an english degree really cost if govt wasnt funding all or part of it?
or, if the colleges were marketing learning itself, as opposed to the college experience?
how much would an english degree really cost if govt wasnt funding all or part of it?
Actually, if undergrad degrees were differentially priced based on actual costs, English would be one of the cheapest ones. You don't have pay English profs as much as science and engineering profs, because you aren't competing with more lucrative lines of employment to get them. (And you can pay their grad students even less.) And there's no laboratory component.
Brian: my cousin's daughter just graduated last year with a degree in 'childhood developement'. he paid full tuition for auburn.
i'm like wtf? to learn how to babysit/raise a child?
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