Not by Accident: The Dark Side of Education -Episode23

Education is one of the top 5 factors that not only transforms an individual's life (including their spouse, children and generations to come) but also to improve the world and mankind's condition.  As access to learning (education being the formal system to facilitate learning... at least that is the objective) swept across society like a wave with the invention of the printing press and other monumental changes that took place in the time period we generally know as "the enlightenment", life on earth began to change.  For the previous five or ten thousand years life was lived within 20 miles of your birtthplace; locomotion remained walking, running or domesticated animals and simple carts; technology was generally static; daily life consisted of subsistence, illness and death (of infants, children and what are now minor diseases).  Education changed all this.  I encourage education.  I run a college. I have no hesitation championing the virtues of education.  Even with all this, education has a dark side.  This is largely because human nature has a dark side.  Education is little more than a gun, knife or car.  All are tremendously valuable but can be wielded to great harm, opppression and brutality.  Too often educated people think they are better than the less educated.  They presume to have some moral superiority over those without letters (MD, Ph.D., MA, BS, Esq.) behind their names.  Thy trade education for arrogance among many other things.  This episode explores this tragic and dangerous propensity.  Education and learning should always lead to humility and compassion, especially for people of character..But like so many things, this does not happen by accident.