Something struck me arising from the broad disscussion surrounding the issue of school shopping in Toronto.
Star Spangled Canadian said he thought rural people or farmers were well educated, smart and learned. (I'm paraphrazing madly here. Don't hold SSC to account for mostly my wording) And, Bookish Agrarian lamented that wasn't really his experience.
Nor is it mine, nor is what BA refered to limited to farmers or rural folk. I run up against the same ethic of ignorance in urban working class people.
Alice Munroe's autobiographical "View from Castle Rock" shares the same observation about the people she grew up with in rural South Western Ontario-- even in the Scottish families who brought with them a very high level of literacy, no matter how humble their old world origins.
I've met farmers and workers in the city that range from distrustfull or hostile to the notion, and fellow farmers and workers who engage in recreational learning, to the outright revelling in ignorance, as if it was a badge of honour.
What gives? What's to be done?