Where Did Congress Go To College?

By on April 6, 2012 in News 6

David Schepp on AOL Jobs:

Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum sought to make some political hay by taking President Obama to task for purportedly saying he wants all Americans to go to college.

Congress College

Speaking to a gathering of some 1,000 conservative activists in Troy, MI Santorum called the president a “snob” for wanting “everybody in America to go to college.”

More: AOL

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  • SF2K01

    This chart is evidently wrong. There are only two independent senators in congress. The chart has one of them going to Brooklyn college, but one went to Yale and the other went to U of Chicago (who is actually from Brooklyn but didn’t go there). If they couldn’t get that basic fact right, I have to wonder about the rest of this chart.

  • Mr Willow

    Santorum called the president a “snob” for wanting “everybody in America to go to college.”

    That’s right. It should be as exclusionary as possible. It should be the privilege of the wealthy, the affluent, the well connected.

    If everybody were well educated, we just might have democracy, and in such a world, how would I be able to impose my views on another?

    If everybody were well educated, we just might have equality, and in such a world, how would I be able to exploit my fellow man?

    • Duane_eddys_gretch

      >If everybody were well educated, [sic] we just might have democracy, and in
      such a world, how would I be able to impose my views on another?

      (a) Education ≠ democracy.  Germany, inventors of the Ph.D., was arguably the best educated nation in the world when they elected Hitler to power. Hitler then proceeded to impose his views on most of Europe. Many well-educated intellectuals also supported totalitarians like Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Mussolini.

      (b) America is a republic, not a democracy.

      (c) The book Academically Adrift (2011) earned a lot of attention for the authors’ findings that about half of all American college grads demonstrated to appreciable gains in intellectual skills in their first two years of college, and about a third of college graduates demonstrated no appreciable intellectual gains even after earning their degrees.

      >If everybody were well educated, [sic] we just might have equality, and in such a world, how would I be able to exploit my fellow man?

      “Well-educated” is a compound word. Compound words are hyphenated. You’ve repeated the error twice. Thus, I assume that you are not well-educated yet you somehow feel able to comment on higher education. Oh, the irony.

      • Mr Willow

        What a delightfully presumptive and insulting reply. 

        (a) No, education does not inherently mean democracy. However, with education comes understanding, comes thought, comes consideration, comes contemplation, comes the ability to formulate individual opinions, comes philosophy of the world, how it works, and how it may be changed for the better. 

        That philosophising, in turn, leads to debate amongst the populous, which is an important feature of democracy. In the situations presented (Hitler, Stalin, etc.), said leaders used fear and appeals to emotion to manipulate the minds of those they wished to rule, instating ignorance or dread in those that would force them out of power, as that was their ultimate objective—power and control. 

        The only reason the intellectuals supported those regimes was either they were intimidated—directly or indirectly—by the power of the regime, or they were prominent members of society and as such figured if they played nice, as it were, they would be afforded a position of authority themselves, if they didn’t buy the shit they were being sold—nationalism, racism, idiotic “give ME power and everything will be made better” propaganda—and didn’t consider the reason democracy works at any capacity is because it involves the collective efforts and diversity of opinions to determine the direction of society. By consolidating opinion and decision-making, you immediately limit the variety of problems such a body can solve, because (generally) they have limited perspective, and it grows worse the more it is consolidated. 

        (b) A republic is only democracy through representation, wherein a few are selected to speak for us, the result of their debate being imposed upon the rest of us. 

        (c) And that is because the American educational system revolves more around standardised testing and grade-point averages—all of which measures how well one can remember a given amount of information, which tends to be immediately discarded—and less on critical thinking, philosophy (contemplation and reflection), or problem solving. 

        People aren’t taught to think for themselves, they are instructed how to behave. They aren’t encouraged to investigate anything outside of whatever chapter they are in, they are constantly having their world-view narrowed; and there is absolutely no consideration given to inquisitiveness that is inherent in humans—yet it is being stifled constantly by the atmosphere of contemporary educational establishments that presents education as a chore that must be done with little justification beyond a very vague “your future will be ruined”, which is probably accurate either way considering people are actively discouraged to question or challenge established paradigms in either a dismissive or hostile manner. This serves no purpose other than to make their minds dependant upon an authority of some sort—clergy, government, celebrity *shudders*—and less upon their own powers to rationally express themselves or present their own ideas (probably because at a certain point, they have no ideas of their own, as all of their ideas come from others). 

        compound words [sic] 

        Criticizing some trivial grammatical mistake I made does nothing to negate the content of my post. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Francis-Bacon/100000742526213 Francis Bacon

    Is it surprising or unexpected that most of our leaders of government went to school for….government? I mean I get it. Maybe the people making the decisions about running an economy should know more about it, but I think the people running our government should know plenty about its inner workings as-well. This is why if I was ever a President I would build an advising staff of economists and the like, so I can get advice from experts. But really, I am not really sure if this graph proved anything.

  • Liam_McGonagle

    Sh*t–you’re kidding me.  These *ssholes actually made it out of grade school?  Well, I hope mater and pater kept the receipts from their tuition payments.  They’ve got a refund coming.