I don't get it

[maevele]

when educated people are pig ignorant about lives other than their own. Do they just not know anyone not just like them, or do they just not pay attention? Because I am a dropout. I should have an excuse to be ignorant. and sometimes I am. I don't have formal training in critical thinking, or other's cultures, or any of it. So if I can see how your educated, sophisticated intellectual ass is hanging out, what's your excuse?


I guess it must be either only knowing people like themselves, or not paying attention. If it is the first, how does that happen without *trying* to recuse yourself from the "others?" Are most people's surroundings much more homogenous? Is madison wisconsin some extreme example of melting pot diversity? I'd think just being at college would have given these people a chance to interact with people who are not just like them in all ways.

And if it is the second, how do you get by in life without noticing the lives of other people around you? Do you only ignore those different from you, or everyone? And how do you fit in to the world around you if you ignore so many people?

Is there some complexity here that explains why my alleged "betters" don't get other people?

Comments

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Yep, definitely Dunning-Kruger Effect and reinforcement of the status quo; many people feel that if you've finished college and done well on tests, you are automatically a Cultured Intellectual Person, so their insensitivity/lack of perception is never visible to them.

The other thing is that it was my experience that my fancy college aspired to admit people from all over the world and from all racial and ethnic backgrounds and from all socioeconomic strata, and did, but that the campus culture was so strongly flavored by white, middle- and upper-middle-class, native-English-speaking, mainline Protestant/Catholic/very assimilated Reform Jewish, US Northeast, post-graduate-degree-required profession having people that it was more of a melting pot than a mosaic. You came in with a bunch of people with wildly different life experiences and you left with a bunch of people who subscribed to The New Yorker and listened to NPR.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

That could be it for some.

But at this point college is so mundane, that I am not sure it's even thought about by these folks. 53% of Americans have attended some form of college. Even my students' parents are getting their GEDs from the local community college and then going on to get Associates (I'm an ESOL teacher).

I think what gives educated people the sense of entitlement and the attitude is *not* the college. Plenty of folks go to college and don't act this way. I think it's really other factors (such as class) in their lives that have also led to them being able to go to college, but I really don't think it's the college education itself. I think they came that way. :)