Friday, 10 October 2008
Overly Educated
« Ruby lambda | Main | News Sources »I was reading David Brooks' opinion piece The Class War Before Palin and I was struck by the
sentence The nation is divided between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated,
overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts.
I am trying to figure out what overeducated
means.
Education has always seemed like a good thing. I can understand "oversophisticated" as a code word for pretentious, and am forced to laugh at myself for twinge I feel in not writing "overly sophisticated", but I remain stuck on "overeducated". I have heard phrases such as "He is overly educated to be working as a janitor" but that seems more a judgemental statement about wasted ability. Could there be some hidden qualifier as in "overly educated to make responsible choices as a citizen" or "overly educated to relate to (or agree with) me, a wholesome Joe Sixpack"?
This leads me to wonder about the "wholesome" claim, particularly in the context of Mrs. Palin. As the marketing campaign, passing as political discourse, strains itself to construct ever more disconnected realities, I find that I often have to double check that words mean what I think them mean.
Perhaps wholesome is one of these words like ravel that mean their own opposite. I understand the "having the simple health or vigor of normal domesticity" take on Mrs. Palin (it seems not to apply to the red states as a whole.. perhaps that's the six pack bit) but could not claim that she bears the "promoting health or well-being of mind or spirit... or body" sense of the word. For the record, cyanide laced Twinkies are not wholesome... they might be sweet in an unctuous and jejune sort of way but are, ultimately, nothing but dangerous.
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Nice post!
I too think of education as a good thing. Overeducated doesn't make much sense to me. In the same way that overly prudent makes no sense.
I think another possible judgment that is being implied by overeducated is that the time you spent educating yourself could have been better spent doing things like protesting same sex marriage or blocking abortion clinics.
You can't put too much knowledge in your brain :)