To the editor:

I suppose I’m a little more sensitive to this anti-education trend because I’m a former teacher. But my parents (born in 1904 and 1914) revered education, even though they didn’t go to college. My uncles returning from WWII were grateful for the GI Bill. I was able to afford college thanks to federal loans and SUNY’s lower tuition.

So this distinct groundswell of resentment against those deemed “intellectuals” concerns me (as does the recent ADE Oct. 27 letter to the editor with a sneering put-down of hypothetical “talking points from a Muliti-cultural Studies freshman seminar at a pricey university”).

I can’t help but wonder how opening one’s mind to broader enlightenment through education, once the hallmark of a civilized and admired society, is now met with disdain and scorn.

Republican politicians targeting education as a waste of taxpayer money hasn’t helped. Nor has the GOP’s regular cuts to the Department of Education. Nor has banning books to suppress information, instead of appreciating the privileges of public education and local libraries.

Where once we turned to respected professionals for their expertise in medicine, science, law, and statesmanship, now social media COVID advice will do, corporations are the climate change experts, politicians buy lawyers to cover their lies and a president can be a blustering, questionably-successful businessman with no knowledge of government.

Liberals are demonized for being educated enough to understand and respect multiple points-of-view concerning all races, cultures and religions. But the new Speaker of the House claims America was founded as a “Biblical Republic” (might want to check with Founding Father John Adams on that one). The GOP is appeasing their evangelical voters (who have a right to believe war in Israel brings them closer to the end-times biblical prophecy) but a religion shouldn’t be used as a political playing chip.

As far as I can determine, anyone with greater knowledge, compassion and world perspective is being attacked in this country. Hence my concern that advanced learning is being disparaged by the right-wing for their purposes. Because, as we who have studied history know, limited awareness enables a dangerously-narrow exclusive ideology to undermine democracy.

Martha Hodges

Massena