Parker's underlying idea is that people who flunk this kind of civics test aren't intelligent enough or well-informed enough to vote.Out of 2,500 American quiz-takers, including college students, elected officials and other randomly selected citizens, nearly 1,800 flunked a 33-question test on basic civics. In fact, elected officials scored slightly lower than the general public with an average score of 44 percent compared to 49 percent.
Only 0.8 percent of all test-takers scored an "A."
America's report card may come as little surprise to fans of Jay Leno's man-on-the-street interviews, which reveal that most people don't know diddly about doohickey. Still, it's disheartening in the wake of a populist-driven election celebrating joes-of-all-trades to be reminded that the voting public is dumber than ever.
The multiple-choice ISI quiz wouldn't deepen the creases in most brains, but the questions do require a basic knowledge of how the U.S. government works. Think fast: In what document do the words "government of the people, by the people, for the people" appear? More than twice as many people (56 percent) knew that Paula Abdul was a judge on "American Idol" than knew that those words come from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (21 percent).
That's just nonsense.
Knowing that the phrase "government of the people, by the people, for the people" comes from the Gettysburg address does not necessarily have anything to do with someone's "competence" to vote.
In the 2008 election, people could be "informed about the issues" if they knew the essentials of Obama's and McCain's positions on taxes, the war in Iraq, health care, and energy. Knowing that James Madison was the author of Federalist 10 wouldn't have made them any better informed about this election.
Actually, civics can be a distraction from learning about contemporary politics. At my state university, we've hired several professors who have taught their introduction to U. S. government classes as civics classes. As a result, students weren't learning as much as they should about the contemporary functioning of Congress, the Presidency, the media, and the courts.
And the professors lost their jobs.
Not that people need to be informed about the issues to be competent to vote either.
As a political science professor and blogger, I'm well-informed on the issues but don't vote on the issues. In general elections, I've voted strictly on party identification since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and have always voted for the Democratic Party. All I need to know about Republicans is that they are candidates of the party of aggressive militarism, supply-side economics, the religious right, and social bigotries of all kinds. That's enough for me to vote Democratic 95% of the time. If any particular Democrat is so odious that I can't vote for them in good conscience, I leave my ballot blank for that office.
Party identification is still the most important factor in voting and is very much a valid means for distinguishing between the more liberal party and the more conservative party. Let me illustrate this by a brief example. Assume that a conservative voter had been in a coma for the last two years, woke up on election day, and insisted on voting without having received any information from the media. That conservative voter would still have made an "informed vote" according to their principles if they had stepped into a ballot box and voted a straight Republican ticket.
People can vote on other principles besides issues as well. Voters can distinguish candidates on the basis of experience, morality, ability to stand up to pressure, how well they organize their campaigns, and other criteria. None of these criteria requires extensive knowledge of politics or issues, but they are all valid and are often more important than the issues in determining the right candidate.
The ultimate point is that voters in a democracy should be able to define their own criteria for what's important in evaluating candidates.
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6 comments:
I have seen you do this dance before, and I still think that you are giving the "uninformed" voter way too much credit. I agree with you that voters can justify voting along party lines, but I seriously doubt that the majority of voters can explain what party they actually belong to and why. And republicans see their party, and the democratic party, in a completely different light than you do (though I believe your characterization is more accurate). And, to your credit, they vote along party lines based on those impressions. Those quizzes are crap, but I still agree that a majority of voters were too uninformed (about the issues, as well as there political identities) to casts responsible votes.
I would be interested to see what would happen if you provided a test to your intro students determining their true political beliefs and how they think they should vote.
I guess it depends on how you define "civics," doesn't it?
So if professors in your department don't teach a subject the way YOU think they should teach it, they get the axe?
So much for academic freedom.
I'm just glad I don't teach at your podunk "university."
This goes to the last two comments. Teaching civics instead of political science just seems like an obvious deal-breaker to me. There's a variety of ways to teach political science but someone serves students very poorly if they are not addressing the discipline.
And what do you know about "political science?"
Seems like you helped run off the 3 real political scientists in your department over the past 2 years.
You don't know what you're talking about.
But I obviously made a mistake in mentioning personnel matters.
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