Healing Trauma: Perspectives And Attitudes, 55

Is it possible to educate everyone? I mean beyond secondary? Beyond postsecondary? How would we all look, as a society, if everyone had the same education in humanities and the liberal arts? What would it take to get us there? How would this change us? It is my understanding that in countries where postsecondary education is completely publicly-funded, there appears to be greater equality, inclusion, and social cohesion. They likely don't have the same ciphers for homelessness that have really stained the Canadian demographic in recent years. This isn't to say that there is no racism, homophobia or misogyny in any of those countries. Of course there is. But I don't think those attitudes and behaviours are going to be given the same kind of pass that they are here and in the US. I just did a quick Google search and it turns out that the Scandinavian countries top the global social cohesion index. (yes, you look so very surprised, Gentle Reader!) Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand play a close, or perhaps distant, second. The Scandinavian countries all have universally accessible postsecondary education, still treated like a luxury here for the privileged classes. There is a strong ratio between education and quality of life. If the education of women is doing wonders in developing countries, even more, universal postsecondary education could do a lot to improve things in our own countries. Remember how the Dump got elected? That basket full of deplorables? What makes them deplorable? They are uneducated working class people who feel justifiably disenfranchised from the gutting of manufacturing jobs in their country, thanks to big corporations moving south on their race to the bottom. Instead of providing extensive education and retraining and all the necessary social supports to keep their own people from going south in rather a sideways direction, the various US administrations and the Republican dominant heartland decided those measures to be just too repugnantly socialist. Even the Dump, while on the campaign trail, would crow his love for the uneducated. It isn't that they were too stupid to not vote for him, but that they lacked the critical thinking faculties from poor education, and there he was, a reality TV star on the ready to help them channel their rage. This is the benefit of a liberal arts education, but if already poor people are too pressured and preoccupied with daily survival in order to move forward in more critical ways, then as voters they are going to make choices that might appeal to their well-justified anger and experience of disenfranchisement, but the candidates they will be choosing are more than likely going to be populist demagogues more interested in shoring up their own power and hegemony than in defending and promoting the principals of liberal democracy. An educated body politic is an empowered body politic and depriving people of higher education is going to happen at our collective peril.