ELITES!

 

In the News

Education was all over the front page of my phone in the last few weeks. Forbes listed its rankings of the best universities in the country. Cal was happy, Harvard not so much. President Biden signed an executive order reducing student loan debt for most middle-class families. Both the far-right and the far-left were unhappy, so it must be a good thing.

A gaggle of state governors and legislatures called for changes in how history is taught and what can be taught. The papers and the airwaves bemoaned the lack of teachers; so many have left the profession and so few joined. Peter Coy wrote an op-ed in the NYT the other day. It was about how grammar was not particularly important. His readers gave him a B-minus. I would be harsher.

I do not believe that the way it was is always better; at least I try to hide the thought from time to time. But up-to-date education news, in general, raises questions about education in general.

A National View

Don’t we want our citizens to be well educated? Don’t we want citizens who can problem solve, tell truth from fiction, and vote wisely? Why is education a “local” issue and not a national issue? It is, and it should be a national imperative. No politician, however, is willing to call for a national set of standards. We should want our students to meet national standards in basic subjects like math, science, languages, literature, and the social sciences. A student in Alabama should have the same math course as a student in Wisconsin. No matter where one lives, two plus two always equals four. The teaching of the history of our country, including warts, needs to be the same. We cannot have the kids up North studying the Civil War while the kids down South fret over the War of Northern Aggression. Why can’t we have one set of educational standards?

Several governors and legislatures have enacted policies that forbid teaching anything about our history that might create negative feelings among students: read White students. Policymakers do not want students to learn about the forced marches of native people from Florida, and the Trail of Tears. They do not want students to know about the horrors of slavery, and the taking of land called Manifest Destiny. They do not want students to know that some people are not treated equally. A democracy can only survive when most of the people are well educated.

Why not Elites?

Generalities are often, well, generalities, but my observation is that it is the well-educated that move society forward with innovative products, increased manufacturing productivity, and superiority in the digital world. India and China educate over eighty-five million high school students each year compared to only fifteen million high school students in the U.S. Consider that the top ten percent of students in China and India, nine million of them, compete with our one and a half million top percenters. China and India are our major economic competitors. To win the economic battles, we need highly educated citizens which makes education a national strategic issue. We need well-educated elites.

The educated elite has become a pejorative when it should not be. Even well-educated elites in the House and Senate, think Harvard undergraduate and Yale Law School, try to convince their constituents that they are only regular folks trying to protect constituents from elites. The lower their state’s education level, the more successful the elites screaming against elitism seem to be.

I do not remember much use of the word elite back when. People were encouraged to get the best education they could; some might argue that was truer for men than for women. The better students went off to the Ivies and highly rated state universities. Those with a science bent often matriculated at Poly’s, MIT, or RPI. Others made other choices, but the aim was to get a good education because the nation needed well-educated people who could reason, invent, manage, implement, and deal with ideas and ideals. There was an understanding that the well-educated and well-trained tradespersons would lead us to a better place, a better life, and a more perfect union.

How did that change? Do we want the uneducated leading us?

Lower Standards?

Peter Coy’s feedback included comments about good grammar being a left-over of the privileged class. But privileged class is another discussion. No matter your station in life, however, you cannot communicate well using lousy grammar. You cannot encourage, discourage, build up, conceptualize, criticize, or hook your reader or your audience with words poorly chosen or connected. OK, rappers can do it, but … So yes, let us build up our supply of well-educated elites. We need them to move the country forward instead of backward. I wish I had studied harder.

What can we do?

How do we get this large contingent of highly educated elite leaders? We might consider, again, national standards for basic educational levels. We might consider making university, college, and trade school an affordable experience for anyone who qualifies and wants to attend. The average college graduate is saddled with about $39,000 in student loan debt. Why should it be that expensive to go to college? Trade schools are expensive as well. Most industrial countries provide university education and trade schools for nearly nothing. Oxford, the Sorbonne, and other prestige schools have incredibly low fees. Most state colleges and universities were once nearly free. We can do it again. We could stop denigrating those who are well educated in our political discourse. We might pay our teachers salaries that compete with the business world or government agencies. 

We might … We might consider education for education’s sake, not just for job training. 

Mirror, Mirror ...

 We either fix our democracy or we will lose it.

 

There is much that the U.S. can learn from countries that are more democratic than we are. They can teach us how to become what and who we thought we were.

 

The bright and shining face I see in the mirror each morning, hiding that fun-loving personality that never stresses over petty things, living life to the fullest, has been told more than once that he does not know his real self. The very notion is always stunning.

 

America also looks at herself in the mirror every morning, confident of what hides behind the image. When told the image might not reflect reality she is stunned. Is it possible that she is not who she thinks she is? Is it possible that she has much to learn and much to save?

 

The U.S. is going through a torturous time and the world watches with glee, dismay, fear, or a combination of each. Daniel Horan, a professor at Saint Mary’s College in Indiana travels the world in his job. He makes a point of spending time with the locals. He has learned that much of the world no longer views us as exceptional or very democratic.[i] Stunning!

 

The events of January 6^th showed the world that we are as vulnerable to political violence and corruption as any other nation. Last week’s CPAC conference in Texas granted Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary, a standing ovation when he called for the U.S. to follow Hungary’s example of wanting to exclude people of mixed races and called for his and our troops to unite in efforts to take over Washington and Brussels. All of that is un-American to the core but highly desired by a fringe group of right-wing zealots.

 

Richard Haass, the highly respected President of the non-partisan Council on Foreign Affairs tells us in his upcoming book that “The most urgent and significant threat to American security and stability stems not from abroad but from within.” The threat, he writes, is “from political divisions that for only the second time in U.S. history have raised questions about the future of American democracy and even the United States itself.”[ii]

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We are in a battle for our soul. We need the help of our better angels. Will we be a democracy or an autocracy? Both camps believe their viewpoint will save the country from itself. The division, however, is rupturing the long-held view that we are the paragon of democracy, that we can show the rest of the world how it is done. The world wonders!

 

A recent Pew survey indicated that fifty-three percent of Americans believe the nation is too divided to solve its problems. That is an increase of 13% compared to the 2020 survey. Over half of the Republican voters believe that the last presidential election was rigged and that Trump won, despite evidence to the contrary. Current mid-term election candidates are running on platforms that call for politicizing the voting process, taking away people’s right to vote, making it harder to vote, and even suggesting that the legislature could decide who won. That is not America.

 

 

We are quickly becoming less and less of a democratic country in the eyes of much of the world.

 

What?

 

How could that be?

 

Curiosity sent me into a Googling frenzy. After ignoring the personal musings of people like me, three credible sources stood out: The Cato Institute, The Heritage Foundation, and The Economist. Each organization ranks countries based on how democratic their governments, institutions, and economies are. They have a history that stands under scrutiny. They use different criteria, but their analysis is well grounded.

 

The Cato Institute publishes The Human Freedom Index. It ranks countries in two major categories: Personal Freedom and Economic Freedom.[iii] It lists Switzerland as the most democratic country in the world and the U.S. the fifteenth most democratic, behind Australia, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, and others. 

 

The Heritage Foundation places more emphasis on economics. They rate the U.S the twenty-fifth most democratic country, behind Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Taiwan, Estonia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and others. 

 

The Economist looks at countries based on how pluralistic they are, how well their government runs, how engaged their citizens are in the political process, their emphasis on preserving civil liberties, and their media freedom. They rank the U.S twenty-fifth, behind the usual suspects.

 

One can argue the finer points of each ranking and move the needle one or two-tenths of a percent in either direction, but the overwhelming conclusion is that we, the epitome of democracy are not particularly democratic anymore. I was stunned and wanted other opinions. I asked a small group of men to scan a list of forty-seven countries, identify the ten most democratic, and rank them 1-10 based on their own opinion, knowledge, or experience. Of the twelve men who responded, only three identified the U.S. as the most democratic. I wish I were stunned.

 

In a speech to the House of Commons in 1947 Winston Churchill announced his view that “Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” So, what does democracy demand of us that makes it so much better? what many of us still value to this day and which so many others want to take away. Democracy demands government by the people, not the political party. It demands that we go to the polls, vote, and accept the results. It demands that every adult has the right to vote no matter their race, ethnicity, religion, worth, or education level. It demands that we respect our institutions. It demands that elected officials do what is best for the country. It demands that each citizen contributes to the common good. Simple notions that we seem to have lost in the last few years. It demands too that we believe in the rule of law, equally applied. A simple idea.

 

Does it matter what think tanks and international news magazines opine about our democracy? Does it matter what folks in other countries think about us? Yes! It matters a lot. We are supposed to be the shining city on the hill, the beacon that others search for. If we are not that bright idea, how can we expect other people and nations to want to be democratic?

 

If we the people who started this great experiment cannot sustain a democratic way of life, why should Kenya try, or Yemen, or Hungary, or, well … name a country that would like to be free? Can we go out and tell them to have a free press when ours is on a ventilator? Can we teach them how to develop a non-political judiciary when ours takes away basic rights? Can we teach them how to conduct free elections when so many of us are trying to take away the franchise and refuse to accept election results and the peaceful transfer of power, after January 6^th? Can we teach them about the rule of law when so many are willing to overturn the very idea?

 

When democracy falters, it provides an opening for autocracy.

 

So yes, we can fix our democracy or lose it. We can learn from the more democratic countries around the world. They can teach us how to become what we once were. 

 

 

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[i] Daniel Horan, OFM – National Catholic Record – July 2022

[ii] Reported in Axios August 10, 2022 – Richard Haass, The Bill of Obligations, January 24, 2023, Penguin Random House

[iii] Cato rankings are measures of the rule of law, security and safety, freedom of movement, freedom of religion, freedom of association, assembly, civil society, expression and information, and relationships. On the economic side, it considers the size of government, legal systems, soundness of money, freedom to trade internationally, and regulation of credit, labor, and business.