[dragonwriter]

> There are teenagers who know twice as much about how to fix a car issue. They don't know what the inside of a computer looks like, but they don't need to. Now, take that example and extrapolate it to several other facets of life, and you can say there's a big gap in an educated person's world and that of his less-educated neighbor.

Which is kind of irrelevant to the subject here, which is really about academics focused on areas of social and policy significance having gaps in that specific subject area that would be filled in if they were just forced to spend a year working in a random working-class non-academic job.

It is specifically not about gaps outside of the targeted academics' areas of work, which is what you seem to be focusing on.

Its more like saying that being forced to spend a year working construction instead of programming would fill in critical gaps in your understanding of computer programming.

[coldtea]

>which is really about academics focused on areas of social and policy significance having gaps in that specific subject area

In not just car mechanics. If you're focused on areas of "social and policy significance" it's even worse to be out of touch with social reality and the effects of policies.

And in fact much much worse (and much much more common) than an engineering professor who can't fix a car.