10. Education Instead of Social Change
The complement of the »no pity for the poor« complex is the overemphasis given to the education of people within the political sections of our interviews. The frequent reference to this topic is the more significant since it does not appear in the interview schedule. Nobody will deny the desirability of political education. It is hard to overlook, however, that the ideal of education often serves as a rationalization for social privileges. People who do not want to confess to antidemocratic leanings prefer to take the stand that democracy would be all right if only people were educated and more »mature.« This condition, naturally, would here and now exclude from political activities those who, on account of their economic situation, need most urgently a social change. This, of course, is never stated in so many words. If, however, as once happened, an overtly fascist man speaks in favor of the abolition of the poll tax in the South, and wants to replace it by an »intelligence test,« there is little doubt about the ultimate purpose. The adulation of »education« occurs quite frequently among uneducated people – perhaps because, for some reason beyond the scope of the present study, education has come to be a kind of a panacea in American ideology. None of our subjects ever takes the trouble of defining to what the mysterious »education« should refer: whether it pertains to the general educational level or whether some special kind of political education is envisaged and how it should be carried out.
The education complex is not confined to high or medium scorers but seems to be more frequent with them than with low scorers. Some examples are given.
M 1230A, a high-scoring man of the Maritime School Group, states,
(What is an ideal society like?) »It would take generations of breeding to bring everybody to the same educational standards ... though not to have such great classes ... although I think we should always have class distinction ... some initiative to try to improve yourself.«
Here it is obvious that the education idea serves as a subtle device by which the anti-utopian can act to prevent a change and yet appear progressive. It is also characteristic that the stress put on a long drawn-out educational process is concomitant with the idea that there always should be some class distinction.
Similarly, the Canadian M 934, a medium scorer, endorses the education idea as a »brake,« this time on the labor movement. He believes:
»The important thing in the labor movement today is education of the rank and file. I just don't think labor is ready to take more influence today.«
It may be noted at random that the more production processes are standardized, the less special training is required, the more technological progress leads toward a certain enlightenment of the masses, the emptier the postulate of education becomes. Our subjects stick to it in a rather fetishistic way.
For the very high-scoring woman, F 104, majoring in Spanish and interested in business, the political demarcation line between her ingroup, the Republicans, and the Democrats coincides with that of education.
»The type of people I have known who are Democrats are usually uneducated people who really don't know what is happening. The present administration has made a mess of things.«
Thus the education ideology interprets the fact that the Democratic Party is more of a lower-class party than the Republicans.
Among low scorers the education idea is somewhat mixed up with the traditional socialist wish for enlightenment. Frequently, there occurs a complaint about the lethargy and the lack of political interest of the masses – from which, regularly, the subjects exempt themselves. In this context we may mention again the phraseological statement of our sailor, M 117:
»We have a good basis for our political system. The majority of people are not interested or equipped enough to understand politics, so that the big proportion of U.S. politics is governed by the capitalistic system.«
The education complex leads us back to where our analysis started, to the ignorance and confusion which clouds the political thinking of most of our sample. It is possible that the education complex somehow expresses the awareness that one really does not know what one talks about when one discusses politics – often enough the praise of education follows, with low scorers, self-accusations on account of their lack of knowledge. However, the vague idea of education takes care of the experience of ignorance rather summarily by a slogan and reliance on an isolated factor of cultural life, thus dispensing with the effort of political thinking. Moreover, it serves in most cases the purpose of projecting one's own ignorance onto others so that one may appear informed oneself.
One last observation may prove to be significant. Whereas the praise of education is heavily accentuated by high scorers, it is at the same time one of the most frequently heard anti-Semitic statements that »the Jews are all out for education« – generally associated with the assertion that they dodge hard manual labor. We may suspect that there is, at the hub of the education complex, the vague realization that this culture excludes the bulk of those whom it embraces from real participation in its more subtle gratifications. While the awkward talk about education expresses longing for a state of affairs where one is no longer stunted by the requirements of »being practical,« fury about one's own educational frustration is projected upon the chosen foe who is supposed to possess what one has to deny to oneself.