We’ve often wondered during the past 30 years how and why so many people would vote against their own longterm best interest. Sure, movie star charisma and perceived straight-shooterism count for some of it, but still . . .
Here we are in 2006 with a failed president who couldn’t cope with a hurricane but takes it on himself to compromise our rights and freedoms in his grandly proclaimed, open-ended terror war. We have a Congress that has shirked its responsibilities to the point of criminal negligence. Our troops are stuck in a deadly, unnecessary quagmire that’s cost us 2,703 soldiers’ lives and a half trillion dollars, with no end in sight. Meanwhile, the middle class is being ground down, our economy is being hollowed out and ours is the biggest debtor nation in the universe, beating whichever country is second by a colossal margin.
Then, here comes another in an expanding series of clues.
Today’s college students are failing to graduate with a knowledge of and appreciation for America’s history and institutions, a new report says. Warning of a “coming crisis in American citizenship,” it blames U.S. colleges and universities for neglecting to prepare students for their civic responsibilities.“We risk a generation of young people not knowing what America stands for,” says Eugene Hickok, former deputy secretary of education (under President Bush) and member of the board that commissioned the report. “This isn’t saying students aren’t doing a good job. It’s saying institutions aren’t doing a good job.”
We don’t doubt that report’s dead accurate and raising a red flag that desperately needs to be raised. But this crisis is here and now, and it’s been with us for most of the past 30 years.
How else to explain the fact President Bush won another term in 2004, despite an abominable first-term record? Despite the fact it was already clear his Iraq war was an incredible blunder. Despite corruption eruptions already starting. Despite his thoroughly unpopular agenda, as typified by his lame-brain plan to privatize Social Security, without even a pretense of an explanation as to how doing that would resolve demographic/financial problems.
We could go on, but you get the idea. It comes down to too many Americans with too vague or vacant an understanding of history, government, sociology and economics. Too many Americans who don’t like to talk or think about politics, preferring to write off all those involved as crooks and crocks.
Too many Americans digesting 8-second sound bites, scanning headlines and absorbing the wit, wisdom and “truth” spouted by such deep thinkers as Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly. Too many Americans thus considering themselves well informed.
That report should serve as a wake-up call. But it won’t, any more than some earlier ones providing similar indications of gross deficiencies in people’s savvy. Ironically, in earlier and simpler times we could get by with a somewhat undereducated electorate.
In today’s world, the stakes are too high, the temptations too great, the dangers too deadly. We’ve got to get serious about preparing people to discern and make sense of the reality of their situation, and act and vote accordingly.
Two previous posts and accompanying comments bear on this problem.
From Aug. 5, 2006, “Ignorance led way to condition our condition is in” and . . .
Fom Feb. 1, 2005, “Ignorance about First Amendment figures, which includes this mind-boggler:
“After being told exactly what the First Amendment says, more than a third of high school students said it goes too far in guaranteeing rights. Half the students didn’t think newspapers should be able to publish freely without government clearance.”
Like the man said, “a generation of young people not knowing what America stands for.” And like we said, the problem is here and it’s now.
I’d say colleges have been successful in their mission of being agents for social change. We have the successful invalidation of European influence; the installing of the minority experience as the only legetimate contribution; political correctness as proper behavior; the deconstruction of the American experience until it has no value. QED
As for Bush’s election victories: voters can only choose between alternatives. Maybe if we had better candidates to choose from, we could elect better leaders. This seems more a failing of the political process than some connection to education.
RSF, I think your assertions about higher education have some validity concerning some colleges and universities. As an indictment of higher education overall, though, it’s a gross exaggeration.
I’m sure you can’t bring yourself to agree, despite a Himalayan mountain range of evidence, but Al Gore and John Kerry were so much better qualified and suited to be president than who we ended up with, comparison should only serve as an added source of embarrassment.
jkelly wrote:
“Liberals, incensed at the other side’s successes . . .”
Thanks for helping to make my point. The people of this country need sound, capable leadership. What they’ve got is a cabal of sharp operators who’ve proven good at raising money, instilling fear, promoting resentment and division, and thus winning elections.
When it comes to governing, they don’t know diddley squat. If you think the Iraq debacle, the backsliding in Afghanistan, the proliferation of terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere, zero progress on a lasting Israeli-Palestinian settlement, six years of all-time-high deficits, the Katrina debacle and 46.5 million people without health care coverage are evidence of “the other side’s successes,” you need to rethink things at a very basic level.
In any case, welcome to Oh!pinion and thanks for joining the discussion.
jkelly, we hardly know ye.
“…Himalayan mountain range of evidence [shows that] Al Gore and John Kerry were so much better qualified and suited to be president than who we ended up with,…”
This is a MAYBE you cast as an absolute. On a rewind, I would give Al Gore a chance, but I still don’t think John Kerry would have done better than GW.
Oh no, RSF. If we were debating the relative merits of Eisenhower or Ford, I would agree to your maybe. I would even stretch things to include Reagan and Bush 41. But not George W. Bush. He is demonstrably the worst president in U.S history, bar none.
“He is demonstrably the worst president in U.S history, bar none.”
Even worse than James Buchanan?
You’re comparing apples and oranges. Apples – all the previous presidents to Bush. Oranges
- Bush to the two democratic failed challengers: Gore & Kerry. As to apples, I agree he
doesn’t rank too high for a president, somewhere near Clinton I’d rate. As to the oranges -
well he did beat them but going further, and it’s of course hypothetical, they’d be doing
worse right now. My opinion of course. This points up the fact that true leaders do not
run for president anymore. Myriad of reasons. One big one is election reform – now only
the rich can run.
jkelly wrote:
“. . . true leaders do not run for president anymore. Myriad of reasons. One big one is election reform – now only the rich can run.”
No question, the wealthy have tremendous advantage in running for president. Same goes for running for Congress. However, it’s not quite yet to the point that only the rich can run.
If you’ll recall, in 2004 Rep. Dennis Kucinich and the Rev. Al Sharpton ran for the Democratic nomination. Neither is wealthy.
Your exceptions prove the rule. Neither Kucinich & Sharpton had a ghost of a chance & both
were viewed by the general public as fringe kooks. Kucinich is left of left of left. Sharpton,
is reverend of no known church. I kinda like his style & flair for self-promotion but down
deep he is evil. Sharpton pretty much ruined some lives – knowingly – back in the 70′s with
the Brawley fiasco. He did it early in his career to promote himself. When it was found out
the girl lied, made it up, Sharpton couldn’t bring himself to apologise. Well, guess it
doesn’t matter since the lives he screwed up were white policemen.
In the real world, Nadar stood a better chance & his was less than 0%. Maybe I should’ve
qualified my statement by saying ‘credible candidates’. The McCain-Feinstein bill made
this all possible.
Hey, I don’t mind men or women of wealth running but my preference is for self-made wealth.
That shows something. Kerry married wealthy women. Not once but twice. With a mug like his,
my hat’s off to him! Gore inherited wealth from his family. Attended exclusive D.C. private schools
and now is against allowing less fortunate families the same free choice. Oh, no, you poor folk
have to go crap schools, no school choice. Hey, we’ve been working on making our public
schools better for 40 years, we’ll get there someday. He’s in the pocket of the public teachers
unions naturally.
Do you know who the two biggest contributors to the democratic party are? Trial lawyers and
the teachers union. I digress.
In order to support his creaky and specious contention that universities are bastions of liberalism reshaping the political landscape, Fred vastly overstates their influence. For over 500 years (i.e., far longer than “traditional marriage” has existed in its present form) universities have been hotbeds for the exchange of new ideas — fundamentally a liberal pursuit, since conservatism, by definition, has no new ideas to exchange — but of little political or social influence except in certain circles of privelege (Oxford, for example, or the Bushes at Yale) that are harbored by universities, groups that seem to absorb relatively little from their institutions except an upper-class accent.
Universities are not vocational schools, nor are they places for remedial education in citizenship. For that we have universal education by public schools, those that still stand against the conservative tide that would reduce them to rubble and replace universal American education with ignorance for the masses and some learnin’ for the wealthy in private schools.
It used to be that people aspired to be wealthy; these days more people think they are wealthy or about to be, so they vote Republican, although they aren’t really wealthy enough (ever, or even in their fantasies) to belong to the truly exclusive club of top-drawer wealth that benefits most from the current administration’s economic “policies”.
Add their votes to those of the fundamentalist anti-sex crowd, the xenophobes, the racists, the crowd who think the Confederacy lives on, the big corporation opportunists, and a few misguided people who think Republicans are fiscally conservative, and you have a minority that Bush declares a “mandate” — or at least enough to pretend he got a majority vote when the Supreme Court installed him in office.
Jeff wrote:
“. . . fundamentally a liberal pursuit, since conservatism, by definition, has no new ideas to exchange . ..”
That reminded me of a joke from way back, maybe the mid or late ’70s:
The Republicans’ world is made up of people who think there’s nothing new under the sun and conservatives who think there shouldn’t be anything new under the sun.
Jeff –
So anyone who disagrees with your liberal point of view is racist, a zenophobe and
antisex, amoung other things? Interesting how debate with a liberal soon degenerates into
personal attack and name calling.
As far as Institutes of Higher Learning, they’re really
just holding tank for children old enough to be adults but not wanting to grow up just yet.
Places for Great Ideas – hardly. They are full of people that are completely intolerant
of ideas that don’t fit their schema. Otherwise, why would well-known conservatives who
come to speak are usually shouted down from the podium before a debate can be had? I’m sure you
know of many examples. It all fits – as the majority – better than 90% of the professors
count themselves liberal. Exchange of ideas? You’ve gotta be kidding. They are institutes
that straightjacket the mind.
Like I wrote previously, liberals are against free choice in education. Look at all the
hypocrite congressmen and senators who send their kids to private schools but won’t
allow poor parents to choose a better school for their progeny.
jkelly, you’re using a common and tiresome line of argument, taking an opponent’s point to a ridicululous extreme, then claiming that’s what he said and condemning him for having said it. As in, “So anyone who disagrees with your liberal point of view is racist.” Jeff didn’t say “anyone.”
I don’t doubt your criticisms of institutions of higher learning have some validity, but you go too far, tarring them all with the same overly broad brush.
You run wild with the same too-broad brush in your last paragraph:
“. . . liberals are against free choice in education. Look at all the hypocrite congressmen and senators who send their kids to private schools but won’t allow poor parents to choose a better school for their progeny.”
Sorry, but I don’t think you’ve checked in with all liberals to get their take on “free choice” in education, or to nail down a definition of that term.
Your blanket condemnation of federal lawmakers as being hypocrites for sending their kids to private schools while keeping poor parents from doing so is pure demagoguery. Sorry, but there’s no diplomatic way to put it.
Members of Congress are in the public eye. More than a few of them have learned what it means to have threats made against them  and their family members. Especially in this time of terrorists, I don’t blame them for wanting the extra security of having their kids in private schools.
While half the senators are millionaires, a good many representatives are much less affluent. D.C. and surrounding suburbs are expensive places to live. I’m sure many wish they could save the cost of private school tuitions.
As for keeping poor people from choosing a better school, let’s try to get past the right-wing rhetoric. What you posit as freedom of choice boils down to undermining public education, in the service of eventually privatizing the whole thing.
Universal public education for any and all kids who show up to learn is essential. No tuition, fees, etc. Spare me the party line about competition and charter schools being a panacea. Studies released earlier this year found little or no educational advantage for students of private-sector schools or business-operated public schools over public schools generally. Costs per pupil, however, were generally higher when business got involved.
Many public schools do need improving. IMO, teacher education needs to be reworked from the ground up. And religious, political and ethnic nit-pickers need to back off and let writers create genuinely useful textbooks again.
All those reforms can and should be done without destroying or selling out public education.
Another valient effort, S.W.
Public schools have their problems, but the more liberal among us are the one resisting change.
“Studies released earlier this year found little or no educational advantage for students of private-sector schools or business-operated public schools over public schools generally. Costs per pupil, however, were generally higher when business got involved.”
I saw these, and I’m unimpressed. There is more evidence that private schools, home schools, and parochial schools educate kids better for less money.
“I don’t blame [people in the public eye] for wanting the extra security of having their kids in private schools.”
Duh!! We all would like “the extra security…” That’s kind of the point.
“What you posit as freedom of choice boils down to undermining public education, in the service of eventually privatizing the whole thing.”
Well, public education has to eventually stand and deliver. It has to show it can be better or equal to a private scheme.
“Universal public education for any and all kids who show up to learn is essential. No tuition, fees, etc.”
Change this to “universal education for all” and I will agree. Making it public often means unions and big administration costs that don’t add to the education of children.
RSF wrote:
“Public schools have their problems, but the more liberal among us are the one resisting change.”
You and jkelly seem to be laboring under the misperception that “the more liberal among us” don’t care if their children, all children, get a good education. That’s an absurd notion.
You also seem to take it as a given that unions somehow stand in the way of educating well. There are teachers and union people who can point to plenty of examples where the opposite is true.
From what I’ve seen, there’s often too many involved in administration at all levels of education, adding to expense and complicating rather than facilitating the core mission. Better lawmaking could go a long way toward fixing that problem.
To make streamlining administration workable over time, however, it must be possible for teachers to earn raises, bonuses and additional vacation time throughout their careers. I think mid-career ceilings are at least partly responsible for so many wanting to move to administration.
“You and jkelly seem to be laboring under the misperception that “the more liberal among us†don’t care if their children, all children, get a good education. That’s an absurd notion.”
Pretty slick. It reminds me of every presentation I sat through where the speaker was pushing some program of multiculturalism, political correctness, moral relativism, anti-American revisionism, global warming, etc. and they always couched it in terms of being better for our children, and they had some anecdote or statistics to back it up. The presenters were earnest people, but I felt they just added to the shift down the road to mediocrity. The latest one was a plan to hire teachers of an ethnic background to match the student’s ethnicity, under the guise of giving the students role models. Gag.
“You also seem to take it as a given that unions somehow stand in the way of educating well. There are teachers and union people who can point to plenty of examples where the opposite is true.”
I need to see those examples. The biggest complaint I hear is that unions just help the bad teachers. I’m reminded of the quote from the head of the Oregon teacher’s union, “I’ll put students first when they start paying union dues.”
“…I think mid-career ceilings are at least partly responsible for so many wanting to move to administration.” Money is only part of it. There is also the “workplace culture”, recognition for doing a good job, positive feedback from students, job satisfaction, etc.
RSF wrote:
“every presentation I sat through where the speaker was pushing some program of multiculturalism, political correctness, moral relativism, anti-American revisionism, global warming . . . I felt they just added to the shift down the road to mediocrity. ”
The way you lump this all together for blanket dismissal as promoting nothing but mediocrity is revealing, RSF. It says you’ve swallowed radical-right orthodoxy whole.
As you might have noticed, I’m not one to promote political correctness, moral relativism and anti-American revisionism. Still, I wonder how thoughtfully and carefully you came to that judgment. I suspect you pretty much rejected out of hand everything those presenters had to say.
I have no problem with having teachers from any and all ethnic, social, religious and economic backgrounds. What I want to see is teachers who are really good at what they do and really devoted to doing it well.
I have no problem with teaching the histories of Asia, Africa and the rest of the world. I just don’t want to see that done at the expense of teaching the history of Western Europe and North America well.
As for anti-American revisionism, I recognize that some things traditionally taught were not true as presented. Truth is important. I’ve run into people who had no idea the founders restricted the vote to the landed gentry. Likewise, I’ve come across people who had no idea slaves weren’t originally enumerated in censuses as whole human beings. I’ve also talked with people who thought it was A-OK for Americans and Europeans to take over Third World countries, and exploit people and resources, in the name of advancing and civilizing them.
Those notions strike me as more wrongheaded and even dangerous than mediocre.
As for global warming, denial and inertia aren’t helpful in preparing future generations to deal with another set of messes we’ve bequeathed to them.
Damn those presenters with statistics to back up their ideas!
I’m ready usually to throw them all out, including the unions and the administrators and the rest of them, whoever they are.
What I want to keep is a commitment to free, universal education because we think it makes better Americans, and support and respect for those teachers who are intelligent and enthusiastic and can actually. For children to want to learn, the schools and the teachers need not more money but more respect from parents and politicians.
Now, where do you want to start? Unions once served a tremendously useful purpose that has been largely forgotten by both the management classes and the union leadership and rank and file. It’s a shame, but perhaps we need to polish up the new Republican Golden Age so that working people rediscover what it is to have their labor exploited. My best guess is that liberal / conservative swings in governing the country serve this rejuvenating purpose, if they serve any purpose at all.
Straw men aside, I think the idea of universal eduation is very important, and I want to see it be universal, fair, and educational.
S.W., ah,(burp), excuse me, I’m swallowing some more radical right orthodoxy…
Your presentation sounds good, but those ideas are often seized by those with an agenda and twisted into criticisms/reasons to remake American society (to their liking).
Jeff S. wrote:
“…so that working people rediscover what it is to have their labor exploited.”
Would this happen to be the exploitation of labor by the central government via taxes and fees to fund the various boondoggles that flow from there?
(I did like your post.)
All I can say about remaking American society to some individual or group’s liking is that many have tried and, to my knowledge, none have really succeeded. Working changes, sure, but remaking, no. Maybe that’s what needs to be pointed out to those who see themselves as being on that kind of mission.
It could include those boondoggles flowing from the government that wastes tax monies when they could be put to good use that all consider valuable; however, at the moment I was writing that I was thinking about the exploitation of labor by management whose CEOs “earn” over 700 times the hourly wage of their workers (an example link).
I, obviously, am not cut out to be a big-business executive, since I have trouble seeing how I could ever be 700 or 800 times as “valuable” as the average worker on my production line.
Jeff wrote:
“I, obviously, am not cut out to be a big-business executive, since I have trouble seeing how I could ever be 700 or 800 times as ‘valuable’ as the average worker on my production line.”
Ah, but that qualifies you splendidly, IMO, to be a corporate trustee. Which is nice work for the few who can get it  and who then proceed to do so little in return for so much.
Just once, I’d like to see a savvy board of trustees at some major corporation bring in a half-dozen well-qualified CEO candidates and proceed to have those candidates bid for the job.
Checking to see if I got the quote right in my haiku this morning, I found this blog!