Education and Opinion

I was struck this morning by some of the data in a New York Times poll and article on the Islamic center that may be built at 45 Park Place in NYC on the site of an old Burlington Coat Factory. Yes, tempers are high and it's a contentious issue, but fear not: I have no intent to comment on its legality or appropriateness right now.

However, since this is an education blog, I thought it might be useful to highlight the following section of the Times data. Be aware that this is a telephone poll of "892 adults throughout New York City" with a margin of error of +/- 3%.

[. . .]

Now, I'm not foolish enough to conflate progress through higher education with intelligence or even with what I would call being truly educated. However, I would guess that there's some correspondence between educational progress and the ability to critically research and assess an issue. So I was absolutely struck at the mathematical rigor with which education level and opinion match up here.

Whatever your personal opinion on the building of an Islamic center, this kind of polling data should indicate that our education level does seem to correspond strongly to our opinions on certain kinds of highly charged issues.