So lets elect the guy who works nights at the Shell on the corner?
Hey, I would have chosen Tolstoy over Bush any day, and Tolstoy was a university drop-out. Add to that that even Ghandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., both degree-holders, acknowledged their debt to Tolstoy for his philosophical and political insights. When degree-holders bow to university drop-outs, it says something there. At the end of the day, you have to judge the character of the person, not just his degree. We find similar with the Persian philosopher Abbas Effendi, who'd received most of his education from his father in prison, and spent about 40 years of his life in prison, only to be giving speeches to intellectuals around the world after the Young Turk rebellion led to his release. Also, some show their genious in a field completely unrelated to what they've studied. Zamenhof, though a trained oculist, was not particularly successful in that field, but outshined the linguists of his day even though he'd never studied linguistics.
I've also met people whose spouses exploited them for a degree. One occurence I've known of in some families is where one spouce works and pays to support the other through university expecting reciprocity, only for the other to abandon his/her responsibilities after the divorce. This means that we may have highly intelligent, trusting and hard-working intellectuals with big hearts not only without a degree, but also with first-hand experience of certain social injustices that need to be rectified and that few degree-holders would understand, while at the same time we have degree-holders who've only learnt how to swindle others. Some pay for their tuition through crime and dishonesty, while others lose their tuition trusting another.
Then we have those who choose not to go to university because they can't find an institution that teaches what it is exactly that they want to learn, or with the philosophy of which they disagree, while others go to university just to get a degree to help them find a job because their parents are paying for it anyway.
There are many factors besides intellect that can determine whether or not a person goes on to university. Many of those who do not go on to university may very well possess experiences that few who've gone to university would have, but which could bring a unique perspective to government policy.
In fact, I could even go further and say that in some cases, a person who may have proven himself relatively unsuccessful in life may have unique perspectives on certain social institutions, whether owing to particular structural injustices or whatnot, that could unjustly prevent persons such as himself from succeeding, perspectives unique to those who may have failed and that few of the most successful and most educated could know about.
Looking at it that way, it might even be useful to have such persons in government (assuming that they have some kind of proven compassion and intellect of course), owing to the unique perspectives they may have. After all, a direct experience of Canada's social services or obstacles to success could be useful. After all, who best to consult on the needs of the poor than the poor, assuming of course that we're dealing with the intellectual and caring poor. They may have identified certain insurmountable obstacles that the rest of us have failed to notice that could help them to finally succeed.
To take a perfect example of how higher academic education can blind politicians to the realities on the ground is Pierre Eliott Trudeau with some of his cultural policies that could only benefit the more educated while pushing the rest further to the margins of society. I'm sure he meant well, but owing to his always being surrounded by academics, he may have overlooked the fact that most Canadians could not possibly meet the various standards he expected in various policies of his, thus marginalizing the very people he was trying to include.
Another example I remember from outside of politics had to do with a CIDA project in an African community, whereby the 'experts' decided to build a well to provide water for the thirsty locals. All refused to use the well, and these 'experts' couldn't figure it out until they finally consulted with the locals. As it turned out, the locals believed that the soles of their ancestors were buried underground and lived in the well water. So of course the well turned out to be a complete waste of time and money, and they then had to bield a sieve through which water could condense at night and drip into bucket. That worked, but had the 'experts' consulted with the 'uneducated locals', they may have avoided the problem in the first place.
A parallel in Canadian culture might be offering student loans to Muslims. Strict Mulsims would refuse to lend or take money at interest for religious reasons, so clearly loans would not work for such persons. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples in Canadian society. Others might have been raised to be ashamed of asking money from the government, and so when in need, even if legally entitled, they might hesitate to apply for help, etc.
All these various cultural factors could prevent persons from succeeding even though they may be intelligent. But if we refuse to even consider such 'failures' for government office, we may be blocking opportunities to finally solve longstanding problems that the academics have thus far failed to solve, they having come from the mainstream cultural milieau for which our socieity is designed, and so blind to these other factors. But if we insist on voting for the 'successful' only, how to solve these hidden problems?
