I moved to Kentucky from out west seven years ago. I think a lot of the problems that plague Kentucky are the same problems that plague many other American states: inequality, limited economic opportunities for many, poor education, urban and rural divide, etc.

I would say that many Kentuckians don’t value education enough. It just doesn’t seem to be a big priority and I think that’s a cultural thing. And it’s not just that they don’t put a high enough priority on education, it’s as though many Kentuckians seem to view being uneducated and ignorant as some kind of virtue and they wear their ignorance like a badge of honor.

I think it might be a consequence of living under very strong class divisions for a very long time. For most of history education has been available exclusively to the upper classes, with limited or no access to the working classes or the poor. I think such class divisions have been common throughout Kentucky’s history. That’s probably why right wing libertarians are so common here. If you keep telling people that they are of a lower class that is less deserving of things like a quality education, eventually they’ll come to believe it.

But I don’t think any of this is unique or exclusive to Kentucky. This is common in many US states, especially those with a relatively large rural population.