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Trends of the Educated

One of the greatest joys of this exchange are dinners in a cross cultural setting that brings forth current day issues and culturally diverse opinions on it. Recently I had the privilege of being part of one, which began when one of the girls, who was doing her phD in Sweden, expressed her concern of how difficult it would be for her to find a husband in China given her superior educational background. The issue she said, would not be raised by her potential husband, but by his parents stuck in an outdated attitude towards marriage.

Her situation received a lot of support from the table and the discussion went onto include how the girl, if she was better educated and older would be at the receiving ending of much criticism from the elders. We talked about how education was changing attitudes towards these ways of thought, how today, what mattered was the person and not society’s measure of him or her and how we were all becoming more humane.

In this mood of openness, I decided to put forth a more radical concept forward. I asked,

“Ok. So age and education does not matter to you anymore. What about sexual orientation. What if your kid came to you and told you he was not straight, that he had a partner of the same sex?”   

The replies were not as forthcoming. There was some hesitation, followed by a I-would-rather-not-talk-about-this answer,

“Do you really think so?”
“Nah. I don’t think that it is going to happen”

And that was the end of it. Personally, I found it surprising and unsurprising. Surprising because a group that and declared itself to be educated and open to modern ways of thought found this issue still a taboo. Unsurprising because, on deeper thought, their response created a distinction between education and keeping up with the trend.

To clarify, accepting a girl who is older or of a better education, is a more and more widely accepted trend of modern society. One does not require a high level of education to understand why the opposite way of thought was chauvinistic and unfair, especially if it is coupled with the peer pressure of seeing everyone else accepting the same trend.

But true education goes beyond that. It teaches a person to see 20, 30, 40, 50 years down the road and see the issues that will confront him then. It makes him question his ardent beliefs and wonder if it is something he should still cling onto. In short, it enlightens him to see the difference in keeping up with trends and the need to question the untrendy. 

And when you think of, if nobody broke away from the herd and put forth something radical, phD and age would be the least of our worries today. 

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