Failure of Education

It's felt like the election results represent the most massive failure of the educational system in history. We have a president who's "average analytic score was more than 3 standard deviations below that of the average Democrat or Republican from the last five election cycles, making him a clear outlier." But David Masciotra points to American voters as the biggest threat to democracy.

The documentation of Americans’ ignorance on fundamental issues of history and governance is by now so thorough that it hardly bears repeating. For example, only 26 percent of Americans can name all three branches of government. These are people commonly referred to as “elitists.”

The problem is not just that Americans don’t know. It is that they don’t know what they don’t know, and they don’t know how to figure it out. Like my students who attempt to meet their research requirement on Twitter, American voters are misinforming themselves with lies and inaccuracies from unreliable sources.

Bobby Azarian concludes:

As absurd as it sounds, now ignorance can apparently be considered a strength for a presidential candidate, as long as they can present it as being folksy.

It appears to indicate a thriving movement composed of individuals who are anti-intellectual and anti-science, and who want a president who is the same.

Update (November 5):  Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg urge humility and educated judgement for our leaders.

We can expect reasonable answers only from those who are deliberative and are repelled by dogma -- a characterization synonymous with the humanist tradition.

Update (February 19, 2018):  For the right wing, educational failure is when liberal arts classes turn someone into a activist.

Update (March 3, 2018):  Sophia McClennen explains why Americans are easy targets for fake news.

The real problem is that the United States is one of the least intelligent nations in the developed world. We aren’t good at processing and analyzing information, and that makes us suckers for bots, trolls and all other sorts of disinformation tactics.