Letter to Editor: Liberalization of Education

Letter to the Editor: Southwest Standard, Nov. 5 2004

The Nov. 5 arti­cle “Students Show Strong Support for Democrats” pro­vides biased per­spec­tive of the recent elec­tion results. Local sta­tis­tics are pro­vided and are valu­able, but do not show that stu­dents led the precincts in sup­port of Kerry.

SMSU is within one of Springfield’s urban cen­ters. Urban com­mu­ni­ties show a ten­dency to favor the Democratic Party. The CNN exit polls list the results amongst vot­ers ages 18–29 as 45%/54% in Kerry’s favor. These same polls list the results amongst urban com­mu­ni­ties as 45%/54% in Kerry’s favor. This is a sin­gle exam­ple that shows the frailty of sta­tis­tics pro­vided with­out com­par­a­tive con­text. Dr. Patrick Scott’s quo­ta­tions attempted to pro­vide some addi­tional con­text, but these were imbal­anced by the hint of polit­i­cal bias.

School is a cat­a­lyst for the lib­er­al­iza­tion of belief. However, lit­eral lib­er­al­iza­tion can take eco­nomic, social or philo­sophic forms. Simplified, belief in eco­nomic free­dom leads to a pref­er­ence for the Republican Party, while social free­dom leads to a pref­er­ence for the Democratic Party.

My own lib­er­al­iza­tion is of a philo­sophic form that demands free­dom in both areas, and I thus pre­fer the Libertarian Party. Scott’s state­ments sug­gest that the removal of igno­rance “goes hand in hand” with the Democratic Party. This is a biased state­ment that sug­gests another pos­si­bil­ity. The mod­ern aca­d­e­mic com­mu­nity is noto­ri­ous for a pref­er­ence towards the Democratic Party. Perhaps class­room indoc­tri­na­tion, and not lib­er­al­iza­tion, has influ­enced stu­dent vot­ing behav­ior. Comparative con­text is nec­es­sary for the respon­si­ble pre­sen­ta­tion of sta­tis­tics, and our stu­dents deserve respon­si­ble journalism.