Many of us probably have suspected for a long time that our soundbit, infotainmented, and MTVed and Gameboyed culture is eroding our critical skills. As individuals, many of us simply may not care too much. After all, a man's entertainment center is his castle. But as citizens of a democracy, we ought to be concerned. As John Stuart Mill said in the 19th century, the democratic premise rests on the presence of an educated citizenry. Ideas and policies can neither be examined nor tested in the marketplace in the absence of an informed and critical public.
Rick Shenkman's Just How Stupid Are We? not only wholeheartedly embraces Mill's observation, but also eliminates any remaining doubt about the growing inadequacy of the American electorate to participate responsibly in democracy. A few of the chilling facts with which the book is crammed:
--half of us can name 4 characters from "The Simpsons," but less than a quarter can name more than one of the guaranteed rights in the First Amendment.
--only 2 out of 5 voters can name all three branches of the federal government.
--only 1 in 5 know that there are 100 federal senators.
--only 1 in 7 can find Iraq on a map.
--only one-fifth of Americans between ages 18-34 bother to keep up with current events.
How to account for this frightening state of ignorance? And just as importantly, what to do about it?
In answer to the first question, Shenkman suggests that the steady erosion of party and labor bosses, who despite their frequent misuse of power at least tended to keep their followers politically informed, has thrown the average voter to the mercy of shallow network commentary (if that) and corporate manipulation. Moreover, the two main political parties have in their respective ways encouraged the dumbing-down trend. Until recently, conservatives never took populism seriously anyway, and so didn't care how ill-educated citizens were. Progressives, on the other hand, embraced an almost mystical faith in the wisdom of the common man. The upshot, says Shenkman, is that we're now "in the pitiful position [where] neither liberals nor conservatives are prepared to say to The People: stop and pay attention. Liberals cannot because their ideology leaves them unprepared to find fault with The People. Conservatives have not because The People repeatedly put them in power."
Bleak as the present crisis of political literacy is, Shenkman doesn't think that the decline is unstoppable. Some of the ideas for reform he floats include a restoration of electoral college autonomy, a return to state legislatures' selecting federal senators, and successful completion of a civics exam as a prerequisite for voting. These and similar policies, he only partly whimsically says, could be bound up in the passage of a "Too Many Stupid Voters Act."
Shenkman's book is reader-friendly, insightful in places, and provocative throughout. But it may suffer from the same myopia that afflicted John Stuart Mill and others of his ilk: the conviction that all we need to get people involved more responsibly in democracy is education. Americans today have more formal schooling than they ever did. Although we may be a shallow culture, we're probably not stupid. So if more and more of us are turning off from politics and refusing to make ourselves informed about current events, perhaps what's going on is an act of the will rather than a laziness of the mind--apathy born of mistrust or despair rather than sheer illiteracy. If that's the case even in part, more education certainly wouldn't hurt. But it won't solve our current malaise.
