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America, The Ignorant

Back on February 19, 2008, I wrote a post that talked about how Americans are in serious intellectual trouble. One finding by the National Science Foundation that I noted in that discussion and which really disturbed me was that one in five American adults think the sun revolves around the Earth. Now I know why we love “reality” shows so much. Well, it’s time to revisit the topics of intellectualism and knowledge among Americans. On April 22, op-ed columnist Bob Herbert of the New York Times talked about a recent survey of teenagers by the education advocacy group Common Core, which found:

• One-quarter of teenagers could not identify Adolf Hitler
• One-third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion
• Fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900
• One-fifth did not know who the United States fought during World War II
• Eleven percent thought Dwight Eisenhower was the president forced from office by the Watergate scandal, while a similar percentage thought it was Harry Truman

At this point, I won’t bore you with some long treatise as to the virtues of intellectualism and knowledge. Rather, I’ll leave you with this. Meaningful discussions on public and economic policy cannot take place when one or more parties are communicating from a platform of ignorance. It would be surprising if anything worthwhile could emerge from such a situation. Let me put it this way- would you believe a person who thinks the sun revolves around the earth? This is why knowledge and intellectualism are crucial to our country’s future.

However, it appears that anti-intellectualism and ignorance are winning the day. Herbert wrote:

We don’t hear a great deal about education in the presidential campaign. It’s much too serious a topic to compete with such fun stuff as Hillary tossing back a shot of whiskey, or Barack rolling a gutter ball.

The nation’s future may depend on how well we educate the current and future generations, but (like the renovation of the nation’s infrastructure, or a serious search for better sources of energy) that can wait. At the moment, no one seems to have the will to engage any of the most serious challenges facing the U.S.

An American kid drops out of high school every 26 seconds. That’s more than a million every year, a sign of big trouble for these largely clueless youngsters in an era in which a college education is crucial to maintaining a middle-class quality of life — and for the country as a whole in a world that is becoming more hotly competitive every day.

Ignorance in the United States is not just bliss, it’s widespread.

We’ve got work to do.

Wise words (thankfully).

Source:

“Clueless in America”
Bob Herbert
New York Times, April 22, 2008