I have been away from the forum over the last week on holiday but have followed the news about an MP wanting lists of educators teaching about Brexit and the frankly disturbing rhetoric from the Mail about universities. It is an interesting point about the correlation between level of education and how people voted in the referendum and why this might be.
Certainly as I went through my education many moons ago, there was a definite trend from memorising to reasoning. At 'O'/GCSE level, a regurgitation of facts was enough to get by. By the time I got to degree level we had to assess facts and propose our theories on what these facts meant. At postgraduate level, I was desigining my own experiments to test hypotheses. I think the education system teaches people not just how to learn but also how to reason and there is an evolution from learning to reasoning as you go further. Of course, it isn't 100% learning at GCSE and 100% reasoning at degree level and the newer style of education at GCSE level is excellent at reviewing evidence for example (I feel that Micheal Gove trying to wind this back when he was education minister was a retrograde step)
There were comments about the difference between intelligence and education and this is right - you can have highly intelligent people who are not educated for whatever reason. However, I would suggest that the demands on intelligence become higher as you go through your education so you might have intelligent uneducated people but you are less likely to see unintelligent educated people. Here is a study backing this up -
http://www.assessmentpsychology.com/iq.htm
So why is there a correlation between education levels and voting to remain? I can think of two reasons;
- Further and higher education gives a student the tools to assess evidence, think critically and independently produce hypotheses
- Further and higher education establishments are hotbeds of trotskyites hell bent on destroying western civilisation