Congratulations to 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee Champion, Kavya Shivashankar. Which leads me to: We need more encouragement of bright young people. And I better remember to use my spell checker on this blog!Right now there are several things going on that need some attention. First on my list is the problem of ignorance. Many other people would think it's North Korea, Iran, Pakistan etc. getting an atomic bomb, or it's Muslims, Black people, poor people, etc. having too many babies. Or it's homosexuals getting married, or legalized abortions murdering 800,000 American babies per year. Or global warming or creeping socialism.
Yes those are all concerns for many people, I don't want to trivialize anything. Not yet anyway. But lets start with the problem of ignorance because if we are ignorant we are not really capable of either figuring out what the real problems are, and with ignorance we are certainly not going to correct the problems.
Some of these alarming problems are overstated, some have easy solutions, some will play themselves out, some are only alarmist propaganda. And some are combinations of the above.
Although I cannot state for sure what the most important problems are or their solutions, I can say that I have seen a lot of ignorant opinions and ignorant attempts at solutions to the problems. I have seen a lot of people get worked up over simple propaganda - for example the guy who shot three policemen dead because he believed the propaganda that they were "coming for his guns". The guy who shot the abortion doctor because he believed he was stopping more murders than he was committing.
These are only the small potatoes, because you also have leaders in the world attempting equally stupid ploys. For example, this story came to light recently. George Bush spoke to Chirac in 2003 asking for help attacking Iraq, and used the argument that the Iraq war had to do with biblical prophecy involving Gog and Magog. Then when France didn't cooperate, renamed French Fries to Freedom Fries. Now all this is so ignorant on so many levels. First, it is ignorant to actually believe in bible prophecies. Second level, even if you believe in bible prophecies, keep quiet about it when speaking to heads of foreign governments, or in fact anybody outside your religious cult. At least have the intelligence to know you will sound like an idiot, and you will not be helping your diplomatic cause. And finally, the French do not care what Americans call "French Fries", as the French do not call them French Fries, and furthermore they were invented in Belgium, so it was ignorant to call them French Fries in the first place.
It would be great if we could declare a "War on Ignorance", but that is not going to happen. However, we have a situation where ignorance is so widespread it is actually hampering the efforts to fix the actual problems. The ignorance is being wilfully spread by organizations from Fox News, to right wing religious groups. From Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to Mark Steyn. The ignorance is now so prevalent that it hamstrings thoughtful, effective responses to our problems.
We have people who have no idea of science shouting down qualified climate experts. People with no knowledge of history shouting down experienced foreign diplomats. People who have never fought a war arguing against General Petraeus about shutting Guantanamo and torture. Commentators on the news giving the impression they are experts in some field or other, but actually they are just pundits giving a personal and uninformed opinion.
Last Friday was the last tonight show with Jay Leno, and one of his running jokes was Jaywalking: talking to ordinary Americans on the street, finding out how little they know. I had always assumed this was made up, or he had to interview thousands of people to get the most stupid answers. He claimed it was real people, with their own answers, and it never took more than an hour or so to interview 16 people and get 9 of them on the show. Jay Leno said he had a response to skeptical people who said "It's all fake, those people are so stupid!" He would say "Yeah? Then who is the first president?" "Lincoln" "OK then thank you".
If there really are that many ignorant people, and there is some reason to think there might be, then we are actually in trouble.
What amazes me is that, although '85 percent' [of Americans] have completed high school, demonstrated ignorance of so many basic things is so prevalent. (Corresponding figure in Canada is about 75%.)
ReplyDeleteI can only surmise that some form of fraud is being perpetrated by the educational system. Have standards been lowered so much that graduates no longer have even the basics of science and history?
If the basis of democracy is an informed electorate ... you're right, we're actually in big trouble.