"the American system still retains a bit of the magic we were once taught to expect"
Serious question for users from US: What "magic" are ye taught to expect? And where / when are ye taught to expect it?
Serious question for users from US: What "magic" are ye taught to expect? And where / when are ye taught to expect it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism#:~:tex....
This is right, especially given much of the world is in abject poverty & starvation.
There was also the massive boom that WW2 gave the American economy. While other countries were rebuilding their infrastructure, America was able to capture markets with the revved up manufacturing that was built during the war.
....
Hmm, actually after a tiny bit of rumination on that new information, that actually could explain a lot.
Not such level BS. The teach the country's history, they try to portray most wars/disputes etc. from the perspective of the country (though most also allow for balance), and so on. Few, if any, countries tells students that they're some unique exception upon the world, or have some burdern to lead the others. Colonial Britain and WWII-era Germany comes to mind.
Prideful counties are hardly unheard of in the world.
Good news is that this BS is generally NOT taught at a college/university level.
Which explains a lot about our country... and our divide... as well. A large percentage of the country has been exposed to education that does not teach such ridiculous beliefs.
So we have "educated" folks with a slightly more realistic view of the world. And then "everybody else" who has only been taught that America is a magical place.
and the ones who merely think that their
own tertiary education group is Great.
There are plenty of folks with postsecondary education who think highly of America, and I'm one of them. It is highly flawed, and also a pretty good place. We get a lot of things right.
Let me be crystal clear: what I'm opposed to is simplistic, jingoistic, one-sided "America is the greatest thing ever" fantasies of American exceptionalism. This is how my primary and secondary education, in a fairly decent public school district in the 80s and 90s, generally described America.
And that's mild, as far as "American exceptionalism" goes. My dad's wife is a member of a radical Christian sect. On a regular basis, she mails me glossy pamphlets and brochures describing how America's greatness is literally foretold in the Bible. There are significant numbers of Americans who believe this wholeheartedly.
There is a clear divide between such delusional fantasies, and a more nuanced view of America. But that doesn't mean all of us on the rational side of the divide think it's an awful place or something like that.
As for me, I don't even have a postsecondary degree. Just some postsecondary education. Not exactly ivory tower stuff. But some of it was eye opening. Ideally our public primary/secondary schools would just teach America's flaws as well as its strengths.
I personally expect people with post-secondary education to be more ideological than people without one. After all, they’ve been in some kind of educational institution for longer...
It is quite common for people with a post-secondary
education to think that they have fundamentally better
critical-thinking skills and are much less prone to
propaganda, just because they have sat in lecture halls
for 4–9 years
There's no way to be clear enough against somebody with a bad-faith agenda.
It's pretty clear you want folks with postsecondary education to disdain those without it.
Perhaps you had a bad experience with education, perhaps it simply feels good to you to tee off on perceived elitism -- whether it actually exists or not. You wouldn't be the first. Some people just get off on that underdog angle.
I regret to inform you that I do not think that postsecondary education automatically makes anybody better than anybody else at any particular thing, and few do, and I've not said such a thing ever. Do I think there's a positive correlation between like, education and critical thinking skills? Yeah, sure. I'd also agree that universities turn out plenty of idiots, and of course some education sucks and can be worse than none at all, and that at best formal education is just one component of being a well-rounded person. All hail the autodidact.
(Forgotting that in the 18th century most of the US was still a provincial backwater - some states basically mostly wild land -- and Europe had far more modern and beautiful cities and better infrastructure).
That, plus the heritage of some religious inspired BS from the earlier Americans (religious zealots from Europe), of the place being some beacon for the world, having a "manifest destiny", and so on...
If anything this “public-private partnership” goes against what Americans have been taught for the last half-century.