[lbo-talk] The Myth of the Madrassa

Leigh Meyers leighcmeyers at yahoo.com
Tue Jun 14 22:00:49 PDT 2005


On Tuesday, June 14, 2005 9:28 PM [PDT], Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> quoted:


> We examined the educational backgrounds of 75 terrorists behind some
> of the most significant recent terrorist attacks against Westerners.
> We found that a majority of them are university-educated, often in
> technical subjects like engineering.
>

Ummm, skewed stats?

I worked (bottling wine) with a couple of Palestinians who were going to UCSC a while back , and when I broached the subject of what they were going to do with their UCSC educations in an occupied territory cum war zone, one of them told me (I paraphrase) that in their culture, if you don't have a college diploma you aren't even considered worthy to scrub toilets.

In some cultures, learning is for learning's sake. I'm not implying that their education is not going to be used for monetary/social status accumulation, or benefit to their society... But the primary stated reason for their education was to have a better understanding of the world around them, and cultural pressure.

Christians go to school to get an education to get a job to make $$$ and accumulate "stuff", but not every religious belief or culture subscribes to that ethic.

Leigh http://www.leighm.net

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