Former President Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the two GOP presidential frontrunners, have both promised a crackdown on colleges should they occupy the White House — a stark reflection of the right’s growing skepticism of higher education.
Some Republican complaints about colleges are related to broader concern about “wokeness” and free speech. But others hint at deeper questions about the value of college, and how to ensure a degree comes with an appropriate economic return.
They see colleges as “liberal wokeness indoctrination centers” because their kids go to college and return more liberal. In a way, they’re right, but it’s not because colleges are actively indoctrinating students.
When you grow up in a town, you’re likely to be surrounded by people like you. They all look like you and think like you. People who look and think different are “strange others” and stereotypes about these people abound.
Then, you go to college. Suddenly, you’re surrounded by people who look different and think differently. That stereotype you have about Group A? Well, you’ve now met 5 people who are in Group A and none of them fit the stereotype. Your biases get shattered and you start to see people as actual people instead of “strange others.”
Then you go back home. Nobody back home has met all the people you met. They still use the old stereotypes that you’ve discarded. To them, you’ve changed. They’re right, but it’s because your experiences have shaped how you see the world not because someone strapped you to a chair and forced “wokeness” into you.
Pretty much. I’d even go a step further and say the classic right-winger finds pretty much all types of education as an enemy now for potentially informing their kids that the BS they’ve been thought at home may not be accurate or based in fact. All of these right-wing groups trying to get books banned, teachers fired, and school curriculum changed pretty much spells it out.
A lot of hardcore right-wingers are also homeschooling their kids these days.
It’s not even ‘these days’ hardcore right wingers have done this since I was in school in the 90s. It’s just that more right wingers have become more hardcore than before.
I had the benefit of a better environment growing up, but when I was at Uni, I cannot say how many people told me this story, particularly about gay folks.
Yeah, I had a buddy who basically could not believe that black people weren’t all savages out to rape and murder. Dude was raised in the backwoods of Georgia and probably never actually met a black person face to face in his whole life.