Kwame Ture talks about this. He argues Americans are conditioned to accept other people’s opinions. It’s in a video, which I don’t have a link to. I saw it on Twitter yesterday, in a commemorative post of his quotes if that helps anyone find it. (It would have been his birthday, I think.) To paraphrase (I doubt it is much different elsewhere in the West):
Ask a college graduate if they have heard of Hitler. Yes.
Ask a college graduate if Hitler is bad. Yes.
Ask a college graduate whether they have read anything written by Hitler. No (3% have).
So how do they know Hitler was bad? Someone told them.
The college system teaches people by giving them summaries.
If the college student is capable of reading the summary, they should be able to read the primary source, but the system does not lead students to read primary sources. The only acceptable literature is literature that has been pre-digested.
Kwame Ture talks about this. He argues Americans are conditioned to accept other people’s opinions. It’s in a video, which I don’t have a link to. I saw it on Twitter yesterday, in a commemorative post of his quotes if that helps anyone find it. (It would have been his birthday, I think.) To paraphrase (I doubt it is much different elsewhere in the West):
Ask a college graduate if they have heard of Hitler. Yes.
Ask a college graduate if Hitler is bad. Yes.
Ask a college graduate whether they have read anything written by Hitler. No (3% have).
So how do they know Hitler was bad? Someone told them.
The college system teaches people by giving them summaries.
If the college student is capable of reading the summary, they should be able to read the primary source, but the system does not lead students to read primary sources. The only acceptable literature is literature that has been pre-digested.