Pitts is confusing
A few weeks ago, Leonard Pitts wrote that the “most consequential political divide in this country” is “between the ignorant and the informed.” I couldn’t agree more. However, he goes on to write about “an education gap between left and right.” The implication is that those with higher education are “informed” and those without it are “ignorant” or uninformed.
While he does give what he calls “empirical” evidence of the education divide, his examples that he claims make that evidence “superfluous” don’t appear to support his argument. The “knowledge-starved likes of Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Louie Gohmert all possess college degrees, and Bachmann and Gohmert have postgraduate law degrees. He then appears to rebut his own argument, saying that, while his mother “lacked education,” she “had a reverence for knowledge” and “was one of the wisest people I’ve ever known.”
Isn’t it possible that others who lack education may also have a “reverence for knowledge” and “value” information? I agree that “we must wrench our local school boards free of partisan political hackery,” but what does Pitts mean by “redouble our efforts to teach our children not what but how to think”?
Don Hood
Spokane Valley