Democracy v Education

Old point but putting it succinctly...

In most societies "education" is considered an essential process that amongst other things improves our judgement so that we can chose better - be that choices as part of our profession like a doctor chosing a diagnosis and course of treatment, or ourselves chosing a suitable partner or job. Our society like most then accepts that the uneducated are not so good a making judgements.

On the other hand however Democracy considers everyone to have equal ability to judge. Democracy ignores the impact of education. Democracy entails a belief that we can live a successful life without any care or attention or education - a kind of in built "ability" to survive.

It seems you can't consistently believe in education and democracy at the same time! John Stuart Mill argued for the educated to have two votes - his thinking seems quite reasonable.

To put it more absurdly you can imagine a reality TV show where medical operations, military decisions or legal judgements were taken by phone vote. I can safely assume that the medical operation would be a disaster. If military decisions came to defending the country I can't see the ensuing battle being a success. And if the morality of friday night pub mentality were unleashed I imagine that most legal judgements would end with the death penalty.

It is not that having a person in charge is the point - isn't it having the right person in charge also. A surgeon does not win a popular vote - they are trained... and so on.

So it seems that there is a big schism here.