Why Americans Are So Ignorant - It's Not Only Fox News, There Are Some Understandable Reasons for it

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/why-americans-are-so-ignorant-its-not-only-fox-news-there-are-some



In 2008, Rick Shenkman, the Editor-in-Chief of the History News Network, published a book entitled Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth about the American Voter. In it he demonstrated, among other things, that most Americans were: (1) ignorant about major international events, (2) knew little about how their own government runs and who runs it, (3) were nonetheless willing to accept government positions and policies even though a moderate amount of critical thought suggested they were bad for the country, and (4) were readily swayed by stereotyping, simplistic solutions, irrational fears and public relations babble.

Shenkman spent 256 pages documenting these claims, using a great number of polls and surveys from very reputable sources. Indeed, in the end it is hard to argue with his data. So, what can we say about this?

One thing that can be said is that this is not an abnormal state of affairs. As has been suggested in prior analyses, ignorance of non-local affairs (often leading to inaccurate assumptions, passive acceptance of authority, and illogical actions) is, in fact, a default position for any population.

To put it another way, the majority of any population will pay little or no attention to news stories or government actions that do not appear to impact their lives or the lives of close associates. If something non-local happens that is brought to their attention by the media, they will passively accept government explanations and simplistic solutions.

[liberal N proud]

1. It all comes down to selfishness

People only care about themselves and those who are really close to them.

[OldDem2012]

2. Does that include the poor, who are just trying to survive every single day of their existence....

...and have little or no time for anything else?

How about the homeless, hungry and unemployed? Are they too acting on selfish impulses by concentrating on their next meal, or shelter, or whatever job they can get while living in their car or in a tent pitched wherever the authorities won't tear it down?

[liberal N proud]

3. Poor, hungry and unemployed are the result of selfishness

Not saying the poor, hungry and unemployed are there because they are selfish but because of societies selfishness has caused their plight.

If we were not selfish, there would be no hunger, and we would help the poor get out of their peril and jobs would be plentiful.

[OldDem2012]

5. Just how are you defining the word "we"? To whom are you directing your comments? nt.

[liberal N proud]

9. We = Americans

Maybe not everyone but as a whole, it is more selfishness than not. Many don't even help others unless there is something in it for themselves.

[melody]

34. You can't decry stereotyping while participating in it n/t

[Skidmore]

6. "We" get the society "we" construct collectively.

And that includes the poor. When people stop standing up and just accept the notion that they have met an overwhelming force, then they have chosen a role and are participants.

[OldDem2012]

11. How close have you lived to the poverty line? How close are you now? nt.

[Skidmore]

13. I grew up dirt poor and

have been on both sides of the line at different times in my life. We're not that far out of it now and I expect in a few years to be back under as we continue to age. Being poor doesn't mean you can push back and that you can't try to seek justice. As long as you have a will you can stand up for yourself and those you love. You don't have to be passive.

[Orrex]

14. Yeah, but that's been true for millennia

If it's a flaw, then it's likely been a flaw since before recorded history.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

20. For what it's worth, I understood what you meant. People are just being argumentative. I'm sure they

know you didn't mean to demonize the poor and disadvantaged. I knew exactly what you were saying.

[Skidmore]

4. The circus came to town at the same time

education started taking hits. Dumbed down curricula absent civics classes, economically strapped parents owned by big finance, over abundance of media programming pushing bling and selling lifestyles beyond the means of most, preoccupation with the cult of self...so many things. While the circus ran in all rings possible, the ringmasters decided to stop passing out bread.

[xchrom]

7. word. nt

[behrstar]

25. Indeed.

[zeemike]

28. You got it.

At some point someone should do a study of how this all came about....because children are not born into this world selfish...it is learned behaviour...and our system and it's organs fed us a diet of selfishness and greed for decades...I saw it myself in my life starting in the 80s...social media fed our kids and us a constant diet of it.
The one TV show I think represents it best was when Micheal J Fox played a kid that rejected his "liberal" parents in favor of worshiping Nixon and becoming businessman that made big bucks...and that was just one of many to follow.

[awoke_in_2003]

33. the war on education...

is accompanied by the war on the media. We are not only undereducated, we are misinformed.

[lunatica]

8. Nothing like stating the obvious

It's not that people are stupid, because they aren't about things that interest them. It's that they aren't interested in politics, either national or local. They assume their elected officials, if they even bothered to vote, are doing their jobs in good faith. But if by chance they learn that their elected officials are corrupt, the general population will just assume that most politicians are corrupt and that there's nothing they can do about it so they accept the corruption.

They don't see how much of it affects them personally because they don't understand that politics affects even the price of the milk they drink, as well as the quality of that milk. They don't see the connection, but it's because of lack of interest, not stupidity.

[fasttense]

21. We are conditioned from birth to be passive.

Where do you spend most of your time? Most people spend it working for someone else. At the workplace, you are nothing but a drone in a capitalist society. You have no democracy at work. You are told what to do, when to do it and how to do it. Your input is not required or even desired for the most part. You are not asked about what to do with the things you create, you are not asked to make decisions about profit and the future of the corporations, you are merely a cog in the wheel of capitalism.

Then suddenly in politics they want you to make a decision. But you have no practice at it. You don't know the truth from a lie. You can't distinguish accurate useful information from useless distractions. You are required to keep your opinions to yourself and obey for 40 to 60 hours a week, that leaves only 3 hours a day to educate yourself. How does this translate into making good decisions in a democracy? It doesn't. It teaches you to obey, not to think.

There are people who get out of the drudge of a capitalist system by starting their own businesses, getting jobs the require rapid and effective decision making, or working for a true cooperative. But they are few. Most people work for some kind of corporation of for an individual. Neither of these environments are democratic. They are top down management with no worker input required, except for your labor at cheap prices.

If we want the vast majority of people to make intelligent informed political decisions in a democracy, we need to introduce them to the decision making process. Expecting people to suddenly know how to make the correct decision when most of their lives they merely obey is like expecting sheep to become wolves overnight.

[lunatica]

24. That's an excellent observation and true

Public schools are designed to make passive obedient cogs of students. Leadership is only accepted in students if they do it the way they're told to. Rebelliousness will get you cast out.

It's depressing when you realize this is what's going on.

[ladjf]

29. I disagree with your negative assertions about how public schools are designed. While there

are some lazy teachers who prefer that their students "sit in the bottom of the boat" so as to make the teachers jobs less problematic, this type of action is not a design from the top.

The real problem with public school education is that the public schools have been under furious attack by the right wingers since as far back as the 1960's and that attack has dramatically weaken the abilities of the public schools to do their job effectively.

Since you only mentioned the public schools, I would be interested to know your views on the efficacy of the private and charter schools.

[lunatica]

40. I have no knowledge of Charter Schools or private schools in the US

But I grew up in Mexico and went to quite a few privates schools. I went to American, Pan American and a British schools there as well as in Bogota, Colombia. The hardest and strictest school I ever went to was the British School where they believe, or at least they believed it then that corporal punishment was justified. I hated that school with a passion but it turned out that I learned more there than in any other school after that.

I came to the US and went to public High Schools in Boston and North Carolina. My experience is that privates schools are much more advanced and harder and cover more ground. Students study various foreign languages and Latin every year instead of as an elective in High School. Subjects such as Physics, Geometry and Math are also more advanced.

When I came to the US and entered High School I had taken every course before, even up to my Senior Year. I barely cracked a book while I was in High School and still managed to graduate in the top 10% of the class.

In an Anthropology class in College we were given an assignment to study the difference between private and public schools in the US. Our results showed that there are a few basic differences in how students are taught. As you and I know, in public schools students are expected to learn directly from the teacher and from books in a passive way and show how much they learn by taking tests. Private schools, again this is a generalization, teach students leadership skills, setting up a completely different way of interacting between the students and the teachers and other students. They are given group tasks, similar to Donald Trump's setting tasks to the apprentices. How they did in those tasks was how they were graded, not by taking a test. I imagine that in time they pick up some very good leadership skills doing these tasks year after year.

One of the students in this Anthropology class argued that not everyone can be a leader and that there's nothing wrong in teaching people to follow orders so they can find work. This was a very long time ago, so this was my first encounter with a true Nasty Republican. He also believed white males were better leaders than women or minorities. It was interesting to see him valiantly justify his views.

[ladjf]

41. Thanks for the interesting response.

I taught in the public schools for 35 years, elementary, high school, college up to the graduate level. I witnessed first hand the damage that the Republicans did to the public schools during that period.

Presently, it appears to me that the right wingers are very anxious to take over the schools in order to indoctrinate the students rather then give them broad educations. They are big on what they call "family issues", which are such things as prayer in schools, teaching religious dogma, racists ideas, homophobic positions and most of all they wish to keep students away from any subjects that might contradict fundamentalist doctrines such as evolution, creationism and sexual morays.

Now days, it's harder than ever to encourage people to go into the education field due to the excessive influence of right-wing nuttery.

[PotatoChip]

10. Sad. So many people just living in their little bubbles of existence.

Unaware, apathetic, and incurious about the world beyond their immediate concerns.

I wish there was one easy answer, but I think there is a vast number of things that contribute to this issue.

[midnight]

12. Is passive acceptance is taught? You know like go along to get along...

[progressoid]

15. Oh baloney. Kim Kardashian doesn't directly impact most Americans, but we all know about her.

I suppose I should add this...

[Coyotl]

26. No, we don't all know about her. You do if you are part of that culture

For some us us, it is just a name we know others know about. Those others are the culture that watches main stream media.

[mopinko]

16. hard wired

"As has been suggested in prior analyses, ignorance of non-local affairs (often leading to inaccurate assumptions, passive acceptance of authority, and illogical actions) is, in fact, a default position for any population. "


one more area where we just need to evolve a little more, imho.

[fasttense]

23. That's because most populations work in a capitalist economic system.

If most populations were required to make decisions about the product or their work. If they had to deal with the important decisions of profit and loss, future reserves and product development, I bet we would have a naturally inquisitive, informed population.

They would have developed the skills for good decision making and would apply them to the political world too.

[Quantess]

17. As though ignorant people cannot be found all over the world...

[TimberValley]

18. A lot of it is because of the "America is the center of the universe" attitude. n/t.

[randome]

19. The more connected we become, the easier it is to be isolated.

As the population density increases (yeah, I know, a favorite theme of mine), it is easier -not harder- to create our own bubbles of existence.

It's easier to lose oneself in the crowd and we have a 'crowd' of more than 300 million in this country.

[notundecided]

22. Shakespeare

The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves

[Spitfire of ATJ]

27. Moran Guy is the perfect contrast to Socrates.

[zipplewrath]

30. Only so many hours in the day

The truth is that various people will be professionals on a subject. This can be true of a politician, a lobbyiest, a diplomant, a civil servant, or a voter. This gives them a certain expertice on a subject, or class of subjects. No one, especially the "common" voter, is going to be an expert on a wide range of topics. The effort to become even "well versed" on a set of related topics can be significant. It doens't take you long to figure out that, as a voter, you can't know everything about everything. As such you decide to put a certain amount of trust in experts of one sort or another. Yes, you can always apply some critical thinking to their positions, but ultimately you'll be challenged by the lack of detailed knowledge on any particular subject.

Of course those well versed in a topic can use their superior knowledge to lie. They can make assertions, or present analysis that avoids adverse information.

And we were suppose to have grown into a society that had a structure for detecting these kinds of problems. Of sorting out the experts and detecting the liars and cheats. It was suppose to be our Fourth Estate. But that went all "for profit" and basically has failed us repeatedly. Which is why there is a discussion AT ALL about global warming, how single payer could be "off the table" without so much as a presentation on all that was lost, and how we went to war on the biggest pack of lies since the first check was "in the mail".

[Dryvinwhileblind]

31. The "ignorant", and the "willingly ignorant"...

...the hair is split, and they BOTH have the whole "ignore" etymology, the present participle of ignorare, (italian), "not to know, to be unacquainted, mistake, misunderstand, take no notice, pay no attention to," .......imagine that!

[The2ndWheel]

32. Society has far outpaced any individual person

Mass society has come about by a certain level and amount of violence over the course of history. It wasn't that much of a voluntary exercise, for the most part. Certainly mass society is not normal in human history. It's a very recent thing.

Look at some of the borders that have been drawn. Many of them don't make sense on the ground. They were drawn by distant powers when they had their day in the sun, for their own interests, not the people living within those borders, and many of those odd lines on a map continue to exist.

Sure, some people may not bother with news from outside their little world. But then, some people also don't want to see "American" jobs go overseas.

Most of anything beyond your own little world is going to be abstract. It's nice to know what's going on in some far off corner of the globe, but there's not much you can do with that information. You can read about it, think about it, you can even give money to some organization that will do something somewhere, but most people will not be able to physically do anything about whatever it is.

I think that's what it comes down to a lot of the time. Physical reality. Because we're still physical beings. We have a significant mental capacity, but it's still a physical world we live on. Out of sight, out of mind.

[melody]

35. swayed by stereotyping?

This IS stereotyping.

You're employing an ethnic stereotype. You're associating ALL Americans with one type of person. You can't do that about any group without insulting all your American family and friends.

[certainot]

36. fox is a red herring- the visual icing on the talk radio lie turd pie- fox reinforces, talk radio

does the heavy lifting of coordinated repetition needed to create lies and the alternate reality that legitimizes the idiots on fox.

like the internet and newspapers, TV channels, like pages, can be switched easily from one political choice to another.

in most of america, there are NO free alternatives for right wing talk radio while driving or working.

the certitude and denial needed to sell big lies and create the alternate teabagger reality is a lot harder to fake on camera than when hiding in a radio studio reading think tank talking points and talking to a big microphone.

fox is a symptom of giving the talk radio monopoly a free speech free ride for the last 25 years. it could not survive without talk radio. when liberals finally figure that out and finally fix the fucking radio the whole fox idiocy will go away and we can have democracy again.

considering the time lost on global warming ignoring talk radio has been the biggest political mistake in history. until the 'left' takes it seriously and challenges it we can forget serious national fact-based discussions on any major issue- forget major reform before it is forced by disaster.

[raouldukelives]

37. So true. As they push the right further and further away, it makes the center seem so radical.

The sleazeballs on the radio come out and say something totally outrageous and unacceptable. Then the mass media exposes the idea, jostles it around a little, points out how wrong it may be and then meets them halfway.
The mentality of the country takes aother small shift to the right, one in many such small shifts, and the serious people in the center can now discuss proposals that would make Nixon blush.

[certainot]

39. and often by the time the left and the MSM notices the lie or distortion i't already been pounded

into the earholes of 50 mil a week with no challenge or rebuttal so it's already reality for the republican teabagger republican base and the 1%'s bimbos are yelling it on the floor of congress and the sunday talk shows as if its gospel

[datasuspect]

38. y'all shut up

Cajun Sperm Bank is on!