WDTLL: Uneducated Generation

[John Fredrick Parker]

Or "What Does This Look Like".

Coming out of discussions of a Nazi Victory TL -- but it could apply to other scenarios -- what does it look like when a modern, industrialized nation adopts an insane education policy that severely guts the teaching of math, science, and the humanities, and keeps these policies in place for a generation (ie > 20 years)?

Has anything like this happened before?* What happens when a generation raised by such an education system comes of age? What does this look like economically, culturally, and socially? And what are the longer term effects?

*obviously, Nazis would count, were they not out of power ten years too early

 

[Francisco Cojuanco]

Well, Apartheid South Africa did just that with respect to the black population. So I'd look at the state of Black South Africans in the 1970s.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

Well, Apartheid South Africa did just that with respect to the black population. So I'd look at the state of Black South Africans in the 1970s.

Problem there is, there's a difference between educational oppressing a subgroup of the population you're trying to keep down anyway, and holding back the country at large (aside from a small elite). Now, if what you said is true and this state of black SA's continued to be the case into the 1990's, then maybe early post-Apartheid SA is an example (since that was when South African government and society started answering to its non-white population).

As an example, since I wouldn't presume to say whether or not this was the case.

 

[Charles RB]

There's a few developing countries (Afghanistan for example) that had this happen but I assume you're talking Europe, Americas etc? Off the top of my head, I'd assume that this country's industry and STEM is now increasingly dependent on old people and foreign immigrants. The latter requires aggressive headhunting abroad, large immigrant and growing second-generation communities, the inevitable "WE DON'T WANT THEIR SORT ROUND 'ERE" backlash...

 

[Dunning Kruger]

Some days I feel like we are in the midst of this experiment in the US.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

There's a few developing countries (Afghanistan for example) that had this happen but I assume you're talking Europe, Americas etc?

Yeah, or an industrialized country in Asia (Japan, etc).

Off the top of my head, I'd assume that this country's industry and STEM is now increasingly dependent on old people and foreign immigrants. The latter requires aggressive headhunting abroad, large immigrant and growing second-generation communities, the inevitable "WE DON'T WANT THEIR SORT ROUND 'ERE" backlash...

Further perpetuating anti-intellectualism etc

 

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

I'd be surprised if we were currently the first and only ones to make this mistake.

Sweden does it too.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

What got me thinking about this:

From Richard Evans Third Reich, by the end of the 1930s, thousands of teachers were leaving their jobs because they couldn't handle it any more; by 1938, there were only 2500 teachers graduating a year, to replace the 8,000 new teachers needed. Class sizes increased to 43 students per teacher, compared to 37 in 1927, less than 1/14 of all secondary schoolteachers were under the age of 40.

As you'd expect in a state where the leader stated that "the training of mental abilities is only secondary [to the breeding of healthy bodies]", by 1939 emplyers "were complaining that graduates' standards of knowledge of language and arithmetic were poor and that the level of school knowledge of the examinees has been sinking for some time".

The Theird Reich, in 1939, had 41,000 students in universities, from 104,000 in 1931. In technical universities, numbers fell from 22,000 in 1931 to 12,000 in 1939. Amongst the smaller student body, the percentage of students going into the sciences had declined, going from 12% to 8% of the student body. Medicine, oddly enough, was the real winner, going from 1/3 of the student body in 1932 to nearly half in 1939. Meanwhile, the number of females in higher education fell from 17,000 in 1932 to under 6,000 in 1939; hardly an encouraging sign. And this, of course, isn't taking into account state-mandated alterations to history, genetics, and some forms of medicine to conform with Nazi racial policies.

So, rather than landing Aryan supermen on the moon, the Nazis are going to face severe problems keeping up with the US and any other liberal democracies in terms of science and technology. Especially once the pre-Nazi generation of scientists retire or die-off.

Sweden does it too.

Has this already happened in the past, where we can point to the fruits already?

 

[strangeland]

Some days I feel like we are in the midst of this experiment in the US.

There are parts of the U.S. where this isn't Alternate History: look at many Inner Cities, Appalachia, and much of the rural South. That should answer your question: the outcome is poor health, high unemployment, high crime, rampant drug abuse, and belief in superstitions such as ghosts, witchcraft, fortune-tellers, the prosperity gospel, astrology, aliens, End Times Prophecies, and conspiracy theories that blame others for their failings (The President is a Kenyan Muslim, the CIA is spreading crack in ghettos, AIDS and Ebola are population control, etc. are all variants of this), all of which have very real and dangerous implications.

 

[joho6411]

There are parts of the U.S. where this isn't Alternate History: look at many Inner Cities, Appalachia, and much of the rural South. That should answer your question: the outcome is poor health, high unemployment, high crime, rampant drug abuse, and belief in superstitions such as ghosts, witchcraft, fortune-tellers, the prosperity gospel, astrology, aliens, End Times Prophecies, and conspiracy theories that blame others for their failings (The President is a Kenyan Muslim, the CIA is spreading crack in ghettos, AIDS and Ebola are population control, etc. are all variants of this), all of which have very real and dangerous implications.

What he said.


Joho

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

There are parts of the U.S. where this isn't Alternate History: look at many Inner Cities, Appalachia, and much of the rural South. That should answer your question:

So, if this were done on a truly national scale (instead of just educationally oppressing part of the population), we'd still see this?

• Poor health (obesity, etc)*
• High unemployment
• High levels of crime and drug use
• Widespread belief in con superstitions, junk science, and conspiracy theories

*I do wonder if the example in my mind, Nazi Europe, manages to avoid this due to a pathological insistence on physical education?

 

[Insider]

So, if this were done on a truly national scale (instead of just educationally oppressing part of the population), we'd still see this?

• Poor health (obesity, etc)*
• High unemployment
• High levels of crime and drug use
• Widespread belief in con superstitions, junk science, and conspiracy theories

*I do wonder if the example in my mind, Nazi Europe, manages to avoid this due to a pathological insistence on physical education?

Actually Nazi Empire would avoid most of these. Poor health due to insistence on physical education.
High unemployment because they would probably insist on strict preference in Aryan workforce.
High levels of crime wouldn't turn out in Nazi legal system as most of these crimes would be on "untermensh" victims.
Drug use could indeed be proliftic.
I don't see how belief in conspiracy theories amoung common people could affect progress done by few elites.

 

[zoomar]

I don't really think generalizations based on how relatively impoverished and/or oppressed populations live and think necessarily translates to how average people in an advanced modern society would fare if it adopts an "insane educational policy". First one has to define what constitutes an "insane" educational policy? Teaching only the "Three Rs"?, Teaching pseudo science? Focusing only on trade education?

Would China and the cultural revolution be an example of a country where rational education was first kidnapped by an ideology and then eaten by it during the cultural revolution?

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

Actually Nazi Empire would avoid most of these. Poor health due to insistence on physical education.
High unemployment because they would probably insist on strict preference in Aryan workforce.
High levels of crime wouldn't turn out in Nazi legal system as most of these crimes would be on "untermensh" victims.

Good points

Drug use could indeed be prolific.

What do you think emerges as the drug of choice? Outside of alcohol, of course.

I don't see how belief in conspiracy theories amoung common people could affect progress done by few elites.

More like, how could the population at large be that much more cuckoo irrational than the Nazi leadership already was?

First one has to define what constitutes an "insane" educational policy? Teaching only the "Three Rs"?, Teaching pseudo science? Focusing only on trade education?

See ON's description of Nazi Education policy, and said system in general; that's what I'm going with as our base line example.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

To make the simplest and shortest comparison: it would be North Korea-esque.

 

[riggerrob]

What about Iran and Iraq during the 1990s?
They fought a bloody trench war to a stalemate. Millions of young Iraqi men were conscripted into the army as teenagers. They were traumatized during human-wave attacks and never learned anything beyond basic military skills.
They were a "lost generation."

 

[Arkenfolm]

If the Taliban lasted another decade or so, you might see this in Afghanistan. Or if ISIS somehow lasts for another decade, same there. When the leadership believes that the Earth is flat and the water cycle is anti-Islamic (therefore evil), that can't say too many good things about the quality of education.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

What about Iran and Iraq during the 1990s?
They fought a bloody trench war to a stalemate. Millions of young Iraqi men were conscripted into the army as teenagers. They were traumatized during human-wave attacks and never learned anything beyond basic military skills.
They were a "lost generation."

Well, the OP specifies the educational drop has to last a generation (20+ years); now the war you're talking about was in the 1980's, but if the disruption you're talking about happened and meets what's discussed here, and said disruption lasted into the 1990's, over a decade after the conflict officially ended -- then yes, we could have an example here. (Oh, and it should go without saying that said disruption has to actually be curbing an education system that was actually functional beforehand -- pretty sure pre-1979 Iran qualifies in this respect, not sure about pre-Saddam Iraq.)

If the Taliban lasted another decade or so, you might see this in Afghanistan. Or if ISIS somehow lasts for another decade, same there. When the leadership believes that the Earth is flat and the water cycle is anti-Islamic (therefore evil), that can't say too many good things about the quality of education.

Afghanistan doesn't quite cut it though, at least where the OP is concerned, since the country was essentially entirely agricultural and semi-manoral even before the Soviet invasion; Syria, OTOH, I've heard is a somewhat developed country with a fair share of professionals (who are currently fled or fleeing), in which case, that would be closer to what we're talking about.

 

[fasquardon]

Some days I feel like we are in the midst of this experiment in the US.

Sweden does it too.

I would say most of the move of students from the sciences in these countries has to do with the countries being rich enough that people can and will study subjects that can in a sense be seen as "luxury consumption", rather than something that is perceived as being a good pick to forge a career out of.

*I do wonder if the example in my mind, Nazi Europe, manages to avoid this due to a pathological insistence on physical education?

I think that the emphasis on physical education would avoid some forms of ill health - obesity for example, is likely to be lower than we'd otherwise expect - I'd imagine that things like depression, heart disease, kidney disease, liver disease and cancer would contribute significantly to middle and old age mortality. In part because of poorer medical care, in part because of life-time stress accumulation, drinking, smoking and methamphetamine consumption.

Also, I suspect that STDs would be a serious problem in a Nazi empire.

High unemployment because they would probably insist on strict preference in Aryan workforce.

That's like saying black unemployment in South Africa didn't exist... Just because the misery is concentrated among "out" groups doesn't mean that it isn't dragging the economy down.

High levels of crime wouldn't turn out in Nazi legal system as most of these crimes would be on "untermensh" victims.

Just legalizing a bunch of criminal actions and ignoring the majority of the rest does not result in criminal behavior that isn't harmful to the society.

I don't see how belief in conspiracy theories amoung common people could affect progress done by few elites.

In a Nazi empire, the elites would be waaaay more superstitious than the common people for at least the 1st generation. After the 1st generation, they'd be at least as superstitious.

Would China and the cultural revolution be an example of a country where rational education was first kidnapped by an ideology and then eaten by it during the cultural revolution?

I think this is a good comparison, even so, China before the Cultural Revolution was not an industrialized country.

The decline in female tertiary education is likely to raise birth-rates as women will be starting families younger - however, it is going to take a long time for that rise to be seen, since cultural factors will keep it down for a generation or so.

fasquardon

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

Also, I suspect that STDs would be a serious problem in a Nazi empire.

They did seem to be lining up all the elements for just such an epidemic...