If You Can’t Figure Out How to Vote, Blame a Teacher
"We're a nation of ideological illiterates, if not ideological idiots," sighs Steve Boriss, who blames America's public schools for failing to teach a proper political education. Instead of teaching the core principles between the right and left, our children are indoctrinated with a hopelessly monolithic curriculum of Republicans versus Democrats. It's a far cry from what Jefferson envisioned.
The reason public education was created in the first place was to help us vote responsibly. Jefferson wanted public education “to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom.” Schools were to teach every citizen “to read, to judge and to vote understandingly on what is passing.” Well, our report card just came back from the Pew Center and, trust me, it’s a good thing we don’t have to worry what will happen when our Founding Fathers come home. Even though it is all our teachers’ fault.
The ABC’s of political ideology — In the Sound of Music, Maria sings “When you read you begin with A-B-C, When you sing you begin with do-re-mi.” But, what about voting? When you vote, you begin with…what exactly?
You begin with “left” and “right.” You don’t begin with “right” and “wrong,” as our ideologically monolithic mainstream media might have you believe. You don’t begin with “Democrat” and “Republican,” which are political parties holding ideologies that vary over time and among their own members. You don’t even begin with “liberal” and “conservative,” which represent how much change we want relative to the status quo. For example, the monarchy-rejecting Founding Fathers were “liberal” in their time, while those who want to preserve their ideas today are “conservative.”
The concepts of left and right explain quite a lot in today’s political debates. For instance, have you noticed there always seem to be two teams squaring-off against each other, and the people on each team never change? The topics might seem to have nothing in common — abortion, death penalty, drilling in ANWR, guns, health care, immigration, school vouchers, Social Security. But in fact, these teammates do have something in common. They have the same view of how the world works.
In a nutshell, those on the left and right hold opposite views on the capability of Man. Those on the right think of Man as hopelessly imperfect and limited in what he can accomplish. Man is not naturally good, but is naturally selfish. He cannot solve all problems, and it is dangerous to give power to those who tell us they can. If there is an “obvious” solution, it must have been tried before, sometime in history, and found to have had unacceptable trade-offs. Better to let the masses and experience guide us.
On the other hand, those on the left believe Man is perfectible and can accomplish just about anything. And since Man can solve all problems, he must have caused all problems in the first place. So somebody must be to blame for everything, whether it is poverty or global warming. Everything must be fixed, ideally by forcing those who are to blame to make sacrifices. Let the most perfect of us, the best and the brightest, tell us what to do.
What if our schoolteachers spent more time encouraging us to understand and celebrate this diversity of world views, rather than harping on differences in gender and race that they hypocritically tell us we ought not to be noticing at all? We would better understand why we hold the political beliefs that we do and be more capable of developing views on unfamiliar topics. We would also be less likely to label our opponents as na√Øve, stupid, mean, evil, or morally deficient, understanding that they just hold what we consider to be misguided premises regarding how the world works. We could engage in more civil discussions, and perhaps more frequently participate in Jefferson’s preferred process to get to the truth – a multitude of voices competing in a freewheeling marketplace of ideas.
Ideological Illiteracy in America — But according to that aforementioned Pew survey, we’re a nation of ideological illiterates, if not ideological idiots. While most Republican voters did somehow manage to classify themselves to the right of the “moderate” midpoint, it is odd that a candidate with purebred conservative positions like Romney was not labeled “conservative” and was placed to the left of President Bush — anything but a conservative on core issues like immigration, campaign finance reform, and spending.
But the dunce cap these days belongs to Democrats, who place themselves right smack in the middle of the spectrum, apparently believing their views to simply be the correct and most reasonable ones. Yet, think about the position on energy that has been taken by every one of their Presidential Primary candidates. We should block drilling in a God-forsaken part of Alaskan no-man’s and no-animal’s land, despite the environmental triumph of the Alaskan pipeline. We should ban construction of additional nuclear power plants, despite decades of success in Europe. We should bet our entire economy on unproven alternative technologies. And, we should remain silent as freedom-suppressing China begins to drill in the Gulf, and Middle Eastern dictators jerk around our economy. This is a moderate position?
So, “how do you solve a problem like America’s schoolteachers?” Sure, Maria von Trapp may have been a little flaky, but at least by the time her oldest student was going on 17 and still too young to vote, they all knew how to identify and bid adieu to a political ideology that did not fit their world view. Which, if you are a product of our public schools, is more than can be said for yiew, and yiew, and yiew.
Steve Boriss blogs at The Future of News. He works for Washington University in St. Louis, where he is Associate Director of the Center for the Application of Information Technology (CAIT) and teaches a class called “The Future of News.”
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14 Comments
1. t delaney:Dear Sir:
By the below quote it is pretty clear that YOU don’t know what the hell you are talking about. On the right the view is that man is self reliant, man is free, man has the capability to define himself and stand on his own, be self sufficient and throw off the regulations, laws and big government that threaten his liberty. Your quote is quite the opposite. Maybe you ought to read a little Burke or Russel Kirk before giving another lecture on how to educate the masses.
“Those on the right think of Man as hopelessly imperfect and limited in what he can accomplish. Man is not naturally good, but is naturally selfish. He cannot solve all problems, and it is dangerous to give power to those who tell us they can.”
“On the other hand, those on the left believe Man is perfectible and can accomplish just about anything. And since Man can solve all problems, he must have caused all problems in the first place. So somebody must be to blame for everything>”
The above quote on the “left” is equally misguided. Man can accomplish anything. That is nothing but bull. The left believes in government as the solution. “It takes a village” precisely because the individual is too stupid or is a victim and cannot stand on their own feet. Really where have you been for the last 50 years? The left stands for Big Government run by the elites of course who in their infinite wisdom know what is best for the people. Take all their money in taxes, take all their personal responsibility, take all their family decisions and give this to an Orwellian government functionaire. Yes their model is the EU in taxation, in social policy, in political correctness, and the role of government.
Feb 3, 2008 - 6:31 am 2. Steve Boriss:Give us a break.To say that they are smack in the middle when the democratic party today (with code pink, moveon.org and soros anti war one worlders) has never been further to the left.
Got it. Start educating yourself first.
Delaney, I regret that I cannot provide in an 800 word essay the education you should have received in our public schools. Blame your teachers, not me. In fact, the ideas in this essay are entirely consistent with the ideas in the book “A Conflict of Visions” by someone you would likely agree with — Thomas Sowell, conservative columnist and Hoover Fellow. His book does incorporate the views of Burke and Kirk. I’d suggest you read it.
Feb 3, 2008 - 7:00 am 3. Josh:I think kids ought to be taught about the differences between Socialism/Communism aka the left and Conservatism. The progressives have a strong hold on the educational bully pulpit from grade school through college. Socialist ideals are blatantly preached while opposing views are shouted down. I wonder what Jefferson would think about that? I have a feeling his revolutionary blood would boil.
Feb 3, 2008 - 7:46 am 4. tanstaafl:When I was in school, it was a toss up between training a mind and conditioning a mind.
In these times, it is my impression that indoctrination of a captive audience has won the day as the role of the government schools.
Part of the explanation (over and above (for example) the ideological slant of the NEA) is the decline in teacher quality and rote inculcation is so much easier than exploring interesting and challenging academic territory.
As I once read a quotation from a (it happened to be Mormon) churchmeister…”You don’t have to think, we’ve done the thinking for you.”
Feb 3, 2008 - 7:54 am 5. sharinlite:We must remember to thank those “travellers” of the l920-50’s and the chemi-heads of the 60’s who were so high they actually were in an alternate reality. A reality they never got out of and so screwed up the country big time!!
Feb 3, 2008 - 8:43 am 6. John Moore:Given the preponderance of left wing teachers, and the idea on the left that pushing their goals trumps the goals of objectivity (see “citizen journalism” for an example), I’d rather the teachers avoided ideology and politics in general.
Instead, they put it into everything – even math books have to be politically correct (read: leftish correct). American herstory has become a story of oppression, and the success and contributions *only* of the oppressed (women, blacks – err… African Americans, Indians…- err, Native Americans, etc).
The failure of political education in America is due both to the ideological persuasion of teachers and the educational elite, and the general incompetence of both.
Feb 3, 2008 - 9:12 am 7. steve bourg:SBorris: You make excellent points about blaming teachers. This is true. I disagree with your definition of Left/Lib vs Right/Conserv….because although it’s true theoretically in some textbook def, it’s not true for the last X decades of increasing government interference……taking huge fractions of our paychecks in what’s supposed to be our dynamic, capitalist economy. The current Left/Libs want a further slide towards European semi-socialism and I’m not talking about govt takeover of businesses, so much as infinite entitlement programs. Teachers and the MSM are both to blame for not educating our people better…..they keep our hoi-polloi in an ignorant tunnel vision without good reference points. Your points on energy policy are terrific. Equally or more imp would be to teach about capitalism more thoroughly — there’s a point when world competition will eat us alive if our govt taxes and regulates us to death. We don’t currently have a “tech boom” advantage as we had in the ’90s, so we’re toast if a Lib wins the White House.
Feb 3, 2008 - 9:46 am 8. Kejda Gjermani:I will give you a fragment by Karl Popper, and the analogy to this issue should be blatant:
“The fundamental mistake made by the philosophical theory of the ultimate sources of our knowledge is that it does not distinguish clearly enough between questions of origin and questions of validity. In general we do not test the validity of an assertion or information by tracing its sources or its origin, but we test it, much more directly, by a critical examination of what has been asserted – of the asserted facts themselves.
Thus the empiricist’s questions ‘How do you know? What is the source of your assertion?’ are wrongly put. They are not formulated in an inexact or slovenly manner, but they are entirely misconceived: they are questions that beg for an authoritarian answer.
The traditional systems of epistemology may be said to result from yes-answers or no-answers to questions about the sources of our knowledge. They never challenge these questions or dispute their legitimacy; the questions are taken as perfectly natural, and nobody seems to see any harm in them.
This is quite interesting, for these questions are clearly authoritarian in spirit. They can be compared with that traditional question of political theory, ‘Who should rule?’, which begs for an authoritarian answer such as ‘the best’, or ‘the wisest’, or ‘the people’, or ‘the majority’. (It suggests, incidentally, such silly alternatives as ‘Who should be our rulers: the capitalists or the workers?’, analogous to ‘What is the ultimate source of knowledge: the intellect or the senses?’) This political question is wrongly put and the answers which it elicits are paradoxical [see selection 25 below]. It should be replaced by a completely different question such as How can we organize our political institutions so that bad or incompetent rulers (whom we should try not to get, but whom we so easily might get all the same) cannot do too much damage? I believe that only by changing our question in this way can we hope to proceed towards a reasonable theory of political institutions.
The question about the sources of our knowledge can be replaced in a similar way. It has always been asked in the spirit of: ‘What are the best sources of our knowledge – the most reliable ones, those which will not lead us into error, and those to which we can and must turn, in case of doubt, as the last court of appeal?’ I propose to assume, instead, that no such ideal sources exist – no more than ideal rulers – and that all ’sources’ are liable to lead us into error at times. And I propose to replace, therefore, the question of the sources of our knowledge by the entirely different question: ‘How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?’
The question of the sources of our knowledge, like so many authoritarian questions, is a genetic one. It asks for the origin of our knowledge, in the belief that knowledge may legitimize itself by its pedigree. The nobility of the racially pure knowledge, the untainted knowledge, the knowledge which derives from the highest authority, if possible from God: these are the (often unconscious) metaphysical ideas behind the question. My modified question, ‘How can we hope to detect error?’ may be said to derive from the view that such pure, untainted and certain sources do not exist, and that questions of origin or of purity should not be confounded with questions of validity, or of truth.”
How can we then organize the educational system so that these authoritative sources of knowledge have as little ability as possible to indoctrinate students? The simple answer is, by leaving public education out of the political formation of students. You yourself in your rough definitions of the left and right have made, what I believe to be, some outrageous gaffes, and I wouldn’t trust either you, or any public “servant” to impartially educate my children on such an important topic. Either the teacher might not know the material adequately to teach it, or s/he may be biased, or s/he may have an agenda.
Same thing with sexual education: the teacher may not know, or may have a bitter experience/opinion of sexuality, or may be a pervert. These things should be left to the family to teach children.
Feb 3, 2008 - 10:04 am 9. David Thomson:We need to guilt trip our fellow citizens to take their responsibilities more serious. They may have indeed been cheated during their years of formal education. Nonetheless, what does that have to do with the present? The vast majority of Americans can take advantage of the Internet, their public libraries, and educational TV networks. There simply is no excuse for continued ignorance.
Feb 3, 2008 - 10:59 am 10. Steve Boriss:Kejda “The simple answer is, by leaving public education out of the political formation of students.”
I’d be very happy with Jefferson’s system, where public education was only for those who could not afford a private one. But now that we are stuck with this public system, the absence of this ideological content in the curriculum leaves a vacuum that is filled with liberal thought presented simply as “the truth.” That’s why so many Democrats, not to mention the mainstream media, think they are right and everyone else wrong, selfish, mean-spirited, and/or morally deficient.
Feb 3, 2008 - 11:01 am 11. radtop:I don’t need some illiterate telling me how I should teach my children. That includes teachers. In Portland, Oregon they go out of their way to try and indoctrinate our children in the marxist ideology of Howard Zinn. Contrary to Boriss, education is to teach children how to live their lives productively. Politics is a zero sum game that can never solve the problems of the human condition.
Feb 4, 2008 - 1:27 am 12. Steve Boriss:radtop, Why do we need a government institution to “teach children how to live our lives productively?” Many government workers don’t even know how to do that. Once you do what your opponents have done, redefine what the public schools are for, you no longer have a firm argument, and have surrendered to those now using schools for their own purposes. Better to either fight for private competition in schools or alter curriculum so they do what they were intended to do: “to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom”
Feb 4, 2008 - 5:39 am 13. MarkD:The teacher’s unions suport the Democrats. Do you seriously expect your children to be taught how to weigh evidence and reach their own conclusions by someone with a vested interest in the current education business? Why is “more money for education” the right answer, when paying more for the same car is stupidity?
Just ask your kids to look for disconfirming evidence. Ask them who benefits and who pays. It’s an easy habit to instill and it lasts a lifetime.
Feb 4, 2008 - 7:16 am 14. RE:When in was in grade school and high school they had classes in ‘civics’. You know – how US federal, state, and local government works, why there is such a thing as the electoral college, and why we are not a ‘democracy’, but rather a federal republic – and why that is so much more equitable than a pure democracy.
If you answered on a test that Judiciary Branch makes the laws, you would fail the class.
People used to understand little details like that, but not so much anymore.
Feb 4, 2008 - 4:31 pm