at great public cost (with more costs upcoming from student loan forgiveness), the U.S. has granted a lot of education to its populace. conventional wisdom says one of the ways that such public investment in education pays off -- it becoming a public good benefitting the public beyond just the individuals receiving education -- is that education causes more intelligent political debate leading to better decisions made by democracy: if not through direct knowledge of the issues, then through the learned and practiced ability of critical thinking.
has this happened? (cynically, no.) how would one measure whether this has happened? if it hasn't happened, what assumption in the conventional wisdom was wrong? perhaps education doesn't teach critical thinking? or democracy isn't designed to effectively use an educated or critical-thinking populace? ("democracy is mob rule.")
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