An excellent post on wrong ways to think about “honor” killing and other crimes of patriarchy, in particular on the murder in a courtroom of a woman by her brother, a lawyer. His reason? She married a man that her family hadn’t chosen for her, and without their permission.
Clearly, mere academic education is no proof against familial brutality, particularly when patriarchy, and the consequent misogyny, leave their indelible and putrid stench upon the family unit, the educational system, the political state, the emotive components of social and cultural institutions, such as religion, music and arts, language and literature (including folklore), as well as media associated with such cultures.
Education is surprisingly worthless as a preventive against misogyny. Why surprisingly? Because it seems so stupid and unthinking to foster inter-sexual hatred on one side and fear on the other. What’s the use of that? How does that make the world a better place to live in? It doesn’t – yet people can be supereducated and still not grasp that.
A lot of education is more training in technical areas, than the development of capacity for any kind of scientific or philosophical thought. Thus, the many physicians who disbelieve evolution, the many engineers who think the earth is 6,000 years old, and the many lawyers who will parrot Lost Cause mythology.
What sort of education, how it is delivered, and how it is absorbed would be relevant here. Never mind education covering a specific subject, like bigotry or misogyny, but general-purpose thinking skills are sadly unencouraged, which is a problem. Even the heyday of US-flavored liberal arts education did not do a whole lot for social justice (even among many who self-included in social justice orientated subcultures).
Certainly academic (in the classic sense) education will do mostly nothing to inoculate people against this sort of stupidawful human behavior. Which is sad, to be sure. (And probably why US Republicans have a platform against teaching critical thinking, as if it were taught all that much in the first place).
Prompted to recall this post by watching this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXW2l0pufuY&feature=plcp
I wanted to write a positive forward-looking paragraph here about how education might equip women with the articulacy and insight to chisel away at miserable patriarchy. Third attempt, though, and the message feels too peppy for me to swallow.
Many people don’t want to make the world a better place to live in- especially for people who don’t share their beliefs. That would make the world a worse place to live in for them. As far as they are concerned, education is a way to confirm their prejudices and find better arguments for them.