'If you're going to be the education president, it'd be nice not to hide that you have an education.

[bingblot]

Have just read yet another article criticizing Obama for being an 'Ivy League elitist'.
I swear I don't think anything makes me so angry as this use of Ivy League as a pejorative. Don't we want people to study hard so they can get a good education? Isn't education a good thing? Are parents upset when their kids go to Harvard or Yale or

Comments

[annearchy]

(I wonder, too, how much discomfort with Obama's education comes from his being black...)

I'd say 90%. An educated black man is...wait for it... an uppity black man. That's really how some people think, and at least some of that is outright racism.

[caz963]

Isn't education a good thing?

Well yeah, you'd think so, wouldn't you? But for some reason on both sides of the pond it's "cool to know nothing." (to quote the Kaiser Chiefs). I see this day after day at school - there are kids who know the answers to questions who won't raise their hands or who pretend not to know when asked because they're scared of being seen as being clever and getting labelled "teacher's pet."
I have to admit that that was pretty much the same back when I was at school, although it's a lot worse now.

I don't understand it. I've always been proud of the fact that I'm reasonably well educated and yes, I agree that those who aspire to lead us should be cleverer/better educated than we are, or how can we have any confidence in their ability to lead?

[mmichelle]

Yeah, I'm going to have to agree with you on this one. My grandmother is ridiculously anti-Ivy League, and I'm like, okay, do you even know anyone who goes to an Ivy League? Because I do, a lot of kids from my high school went to ivies (it was a really good school), and I even applied to Brown, and I honestly find this offensive! ALSO, I think it's stupid because yes Ivies are really really good schools, but there are also other schools out there that are just as good as Ivies but don't get near as much of this horrible elitist stigma. Like, I was thisclose to going to Northwestern, which, if you want to get technical about it, is a higher ranked school than Brown, but I guarantee I would have gotten no shit from my grandma about going there, but if I'd gone to Brown, it would have been horrible

[likebunnies]

I want to get a t-shirt that says 'You say elitist like it's a bad thing.' I'm so tired of smart people being bad. I thought we'd like to have intelligent people make decisions. We want intelligent doctors to decide what to do with our lives... why not intelligent politicians?

[bingblot]

I want one of those shirts too!