08 August 2006

P.T. Barnum Was Right! (apologies to Jay Leno)

Today, safely ensconced in that port city to the south, huddled by the A/C having survived the usual insane traffice here, I came across this little tidbit on the Washington Post site.
In this age of polling, hardly a day goes by without some new report about the state of American public opinion. But pollsters rarely acknowledge the well-documented finding in political science that citizens know little about current events in general and even less about overseas events. This so-called "knowledge gap" between domestic and international news was the subject of this study.

What most amused me about this is that when I fired up my sister-in-law's computer, I got the home page for the Verizon Central news service for the Internet. It offers three choices to click on for "News Headlines."

1) US News
2) Business News
3) Entertainment News

That's all folks! One of our biggest telecommunication companies assumes that those three choices represent all that an American would be interested in.

The article concludes with the obvious: "The fact that Americans tend to be less than well-informed about international affairs raises important questions about the formulation of foreign policy."

Now I teach a swath of this American public the facts of World History and can testify that they know very little about their world. That does not bother me - they're there to learn. But they have absolutely no curiousity to find out about their world. That bothers me.

3 Comments:

At 09 August, 2006 13:32, Blogger Elliot said...

Why would you need to learn about anything if you already lived in America, the centre of the the world? You've got the best economy, science, culture, and religion! Why look elsewhere?

Or it could just be that they're teenagers who are more interested in sex, bright colours and loud noises.

 
At 09 August, 2006 16:31, Blogger Clemens said...

Did I say I liked sarcastic humor... oh, right - I did!

And like the Groucho Marx comment about loving his cigar, a normal, inquisitive teenager ought to have a little curiosity about their world.

And some of these guys are 20-22, with friends, husbands and lovers 'over there' - or are about to be shipped 'over there' soon!

 
At 14 August, 2006 20:31, Blogger Clemens said...

I forgot to mention - those young folks who HAVE been 'over there' return with a whole 'nother set of priotities and interests.

 

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