--- "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
> It's worth remembering, too -- over against the myth
> of "college
> radicals" and the Vietnam war -- that in the 1960s
> support for the US
> government's war against Vietnam was directly (not
> inversely)
> proportional to years of formal education. I.e.,
> American education was
> doing its job: the more of it you had, the more
> likely you were to
> support what Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon were doing to SE
> Asia. Mutatis
> mutandis, that's probably even more so today. --CGE
>
[WS:] I think it is a pretty hast generalization. If
"American education were doing its job" as you claim,
students would be more liberal, because the faculty
tend to be more liberal than students.
Before jumping to any conclusion about young people or higher education, I would like to see more of the survey's methodology (unfortunately, the link the survey does not work anymore.) I am pretty much unimpressed with the results based on a sample of 1,362 split four or five-ways (18-29 years, 30-39? 40-49, 50 -64, 65+ ?). That gives you about 300 (or less) people per age group. 56 % of that number is 168 (i.e. number of young people against) whereas 62% is 186 (i.e. number of older people against) – the difference of 18. So the big news is really based on the opinion of 18 or so people! I am unimpressed.
However, even if the survey results were indicative of real trends, my explanation would be peer pressure rather than effects of education. Younger people are more susceptible to peer pressure than old people, and peer pressure tends to be more favorable toward conventional norms and the status quo. That will likely result in younger people reporting pro-establishment views when interviewed by strangers.
The geezers are more likely to speak up their minds without giving a shit how it is received by others.
Wojtek
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com