Advanced education can function as a process of losing faith

Evidence

When I first read Strangers in Paradise: Academics from the Working Class, I was stunned by the intense bitterness expressed in the individual narratives. This bitterness was not unfamiliar to me. I understood what Jane Ellen Wilson meant when she declared, “The whole process of becoming highly educated was for me a process of losing faith.” I have felt that bitterness most keenly in relation to academic colleagues. It emerged from my sense that so many of them willingly betrayed the promise of intellectual fellowship and radical openness that I believe is the heart and soul of learning. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 408

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the ch7 anti-intellectualism/exclusion point that silence Black women from both ends — education as loss of faith parallels the whiteness of the academy’s betrayal. — connects to: The classroom remains a privileged location of possibility despite the academy’s limits — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 414; Elite education requires deliberate unlearning to avoid ethical blindness; Faith that tries to transcend knowledge is destroyed by that very attempt (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Elite education requires deliberate unlearning to avoid ethical blindness #expands (0.85)
• Universities undermine religious belief by inculcating analytic thinking #exemplifies (0.82) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 608
• Faith that tries to transcend knowledge is destroyed by that very attempt #expands (0.80)