I'm kinda curious if y'all have opinions even tangential to this. It seems like there used to be pride in being an autodidact, while now any education outside of the standard channels is considered illegitimate or "posing."

  • pluggd [they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    The Babbits of the 1920s absolutely preferred to see their kid marry a good, industrious type rather than a charity do-gooder

    Ok, if we're going with the frame of a 1920s context, a doctor/scientist in those times would absolutely have been a "good, industrious type" looking for status and money, with the added cachet of being educated. Education being something to venerate and admire. That cachet is gone imo. Willful ignorance among high earners is a badge of honor.

    I don't accept your characterizations in the second paragraph tbh. My impression is that there was a significant working and middle class cohort, from the 1920s, if you like, to the mid 90s, who viewed education as their children's way to respectability and agency. The parents might not have been educated themselves but they believed in it's value and liked the thought that they were contributing to society by producing educated children. That's gone imo. The major factor in this is the FOX media complex.

    • NaturalsNotInIt [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Doctors were widely considered quacks until the 50s/60s. "Scienctist" never had much cache unless they were inventors that made money. There was a brief time when being a scientist was pretigious in the 50s/60s, and that was mostly tied to the Space Race and the cold war.

      I don’t accept your characterizations in the second paragraph tbh. My impression is that there was a significant working and middle class cohort, from the 1920s, if you like, to the mid 90s, who viewed education as their children’s way to respectability and agency. The parents might not have been educated themselves but they believed in it’s value and liked the thought that they were contributing to society by producing educated children.

      Capitalists have never seen the value in things that don't directly make money. That's always been a feature of the bourgeoisie. I think a lot of people have mixed up conceptions and think that the mid-20th century was the norm whereas in reality, the modern day is much closer to what Capitalism always has been than the 50s through the 80s. The Fox media complex was the past was preachers, radio, etc.