ADDRESSING THE KNOWLEDGE GAP

In trying to make the case that a civics curriculum should promote social capital,[1] this writer identified three aims for that curriculum.  The three aims are imparting essential structural, procedural, and functional knowledge of the nation’s governmental/political system, training students in effective political skills, and encouraging students to participate in the nation’s democratic/republican governance.  As a way to ease these other aims, such a curriculum should also add two more specific aims; that is, students should be encouraged to be civil and law abiding citizens.

          These aims are identified due to the nature of civics and due to current problem areas affecting the nation’s polity, at least as compared to other nations.  This blog has reported these problems.  For example, the US has an ongoing lack of civil behavior among significant numbers of its citizenry, the highest level of incarceration among advanced countries, and the highest rate of crime victimization.  These problems will be more fully described in future postings.

          Using the concept, social capital, Robert D. Putnam paints a disheartening picture when describing how well the nation’s citizenry is fulfilling the aims and functions of civics.  He found, relative to American historical standards, less concern for communal involvement and higher levels of uncivil and criminal behavior.[2]

This posting wants to begin providing an update on the shortcomings of civics education in terms of the above aims.  It will provide evidence that, in effect, the citizenry of the US exhibits insufficient levels of political knowledge, political skill, dispositions toward political involvement, civil behaviors, and law abiding behaviors.

Specifically, this posting begins looking at levels of political knowledge among American students.  In terms of knowledge, one can ask:  do schools teach lifelong lessons as to the structure, processes, and functions of the governmental/political system?   From an array of studies, it will report what the state of political knowledge is.

From an account by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) testing, American students do demonstrate a level of civic knowledge such as: 

·        75% of fourth graders indicated that only citizens can vote in the United States;

·        And 47% correctly identified the role of the Supreme Court;

·        80% of eighth graders understood what a notice for jury duty was;

·        and 49% knew that the Bill of Rights protects religious freedom;

·        72% of twelfth graders could correctly analyze historical materials relating to the function of education;

·        and 50% indicated they were aware of the President's role in foreign policy.[3] 

It is safe to say that such knowledge was acquired in school and not in other areas where young people frequent.  While different localities do have an influence on political knowledge and attitudes, schools do seem to be the primary place where this acquisition of knowledge occurs.[4] 

These statistics, though, are not conclusive evidence that schools are doing an adequate job in imparting governmental knowledge.  Can one conclude that these percentages, the ones just cited, are high enough?  Or, as also indicated in the NAEP Executive Summary, a mere 5% of twelfth graders could explain the constitutional principle of checks on presidential powers[5] – a finding that is relatively important given the rhetoric of presidential campaigns.

What, in a meaningful sense, characterizes a populace that is well educated in civic affairs, one that will be able to discern social realities not just for the benefit of its own well-being, but for the general good?  A study that looked at voters from 1984 to 2004, the American National Election Studies, found a consistent trend.  That is, the American voter can be, in each of the reviewed years, divided into three groupings.

The groupings are the “ideologues,” 33.7%, who definitely see themselves as liberal or conservative; “alternatives,” 41%, who are either morally liberal and economically conservative or the other way around; and “agnostics,” 25.3%, who lack any consistency between their moral and economic beliefs.  This research found these results in each of the 20 years – a telling finding.[6]  For one thing, it tells one that among voters there is a high degree of inconsistency – roughly, one in four voters can be seen as being inconsistent in their political beliefs.

An online study service, provided by Quizlet, inadvertently offers more evidence of this inconsistency.  It asks the question about how consistent Americans are in their beliefs.  The correct answer is:  “People often express opinions at odds with the ideological label they attach to themselves.”[7]  This answer reflects the inconsistency of Americans and Quizlet uses this descriptive generalization as a defining characteristic of American citizens.

There are other sources of information that indicate resulting consequences of an inconsistent electorate.  If one listens, for example, to American political rhetoric, one cannot help noticing the level of illogical thinking betrayed by that rhetoric.  And all of it is expressed without any cost to the politicians who engage in it; it doesn’t hurt them at the ballot box.  The following characterizes much of what politicians say: 

·        attack the character of one’s opponent instead of his/her positions;

·        misrepresent or exaggerate an opponent’s position and use small numbers of occurrences to vilify an opponent’s position;

·        overstate one premise of his/her position as the determining factor of the case;

·        insist that if something happened one time, it will of necessity happen again;

·        conduct debates over complex issues as either/or questions;

·        lay the burden of proof on those who are questioning a policy position;

·        insist that a condition follows another condition when there is no logical connection between the conditions. 

Each of these is a rhetorical “trick” and, in the literature of logic argumentation, each is given a name.  For example, the either/or argument is known as a false dichotomy.  The fact that these “tricks” are common says a great deal about those who consume them, more than what it says about those who use them.

Recently, the last dozen or so years, there have been published studies looking at what school age people know about government and politics.  Naturally, many of the students who were the subjects of these studies are of voting age today.  These studies are useful in trying to determine why so many voters are inconsistent because inconsistency is usually associated with a lack of knowledge.  Also, lacking political knowledge can be associated with a lack of social capital.  Being knowledgeable is logically tied to being motivated to know.  Lack of it, in terms of governance and politics, reflects a lack of “an active, public-spirited citizenry.”

One such study was conducted by the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS).  They extensively surveyed young people about their political knowledge and concluded there was a serious deficiency of such knowledge.  After revealing these low levels, it summarized its findings by reporting that only 25% of the subjects could identify all three of the following: the vice president’s name, their governor’s name, and the term length of a member of the US House of Representatives.[8] 

They concluded that unfortunately, young people “lack any real understanding of citizenship…information and understanding about the democratic process…and information about candidates and political parties.”[9]  If this is an accurate depiction of the average American, it is no wonder many Americans are inconsistent; they lack the necessary knowledge to see how political realities connect, leaving them to respond to most questions on an intuitive basis with little or no reflection.

To be clear, this is not an argument that a responsible voter needs to be a hundred percent liberal or conservative.  One can have mixed views and still be a responsible, clear thinking voter.  But when a voter holds mutually exclusive or logically inconsistent positions with each other or when he/she applies inconsistent priority weightings of held values, these mental deficiencies lead to impressionable voting and other detrimental political actions or inactions.  Such voters are noted for being irrational.

In the next posting, the blog will take up this description of the knowledge levels of the American populous and how it reflects the viability of the nation’s civics education efforts.  To end this posting, the writer merely wants to add: these problems with consistency, unfortunately, seem to be a consistent problem among the citizenry of the United States.

---

[1] A social/political environment noted for an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.

[2] Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

[3] “Executive Summary of the Results of the Latest Administration of Assessment Test on Civic Knowledge.” National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). 2006, http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/itmrls.

[4] Gimble, et al., Cultivating Democracy: Civic Environments and Political Socialization in America.

[5] “Executive Summary of the Results of the Latest Administration of Assessment Test on Civic Knowledge,” NAEP.

[6] Eileen Zimmerman, “Researchers:  How Polarized Are U. S. Voters?” Stanford Graduate School of Business, accessed April 16, 2014, https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/researchers-how-polarized-are-us-voters .

[7] “AP gov unit 2,” Quizlet, accessed February 14, 2017, https://quizlet.com/33367294/ap-gov-unit-2-flash-cards/ .

[8] “Report on Survey Conducted by NASS on Americans’ Knowledge of Political System,” National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), 1999, http://www.nass.org/ , the report has been taken down.

[9] Ibid., n. p.