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The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation reports:
Just a third of Americans can pass a multiple choice "U.S. Citizenship Test", fumbling over such simple questions as the cause of the cold war or naming just one thing Benjamin Franklin is famous for.
And of Americans 45 and younger, the passing rate is a tiny 19 percent, according to a survey done for the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.
Worse: The actual test only requires that 60 percent of the answers be correct. In the survey, just 36 percent passed.
Among the embarrassing errors uncovered in the survey of questions taken from the U.S. Citizenship Test and conducted by Lincoln Park Stragtegies:
- 72 percent of respondents either incorrectly identified or were unsure of which states were part of the 13 original states.
- 24 percent could correctly identify one thing Benjamin Franklin was famous for, with 37 percent believing he invented the lightbulb.
- 12 percent incorrectly thought WWII General Dwight Eisenhower led troops in the Civil War.
- 2 percent said the Cold War was caused by climate change.
Also at Sputnik and The Tri-City Herald
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1-in-3 Pass `US Citizenship Test,' Just 19% for Americans 45 and Younger
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Grelb's Reminder:
Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
average drivers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Thursday October 04 2018, @11:16PM (18 children)
People who are ignorant of history are likely to repeat it in some not-so-different fashion. Things are often not obvious (the stove will burn you) until either you actually go ahead and burn yourself (you had no history to help you out) or you are taught that putting your hand there will get you burned.
This, in essence, is what history does: for instance, a study McCarthyism demonstrates how certain base perceptions and drives can result in highly toxic results all across society; a study of the implementation of involuntary slavery in the US teaches you (some of) why involuntary slavery is bad. It also sheds considerable light on the 13th amendment of the constitution, and of course, then you have to study the history of the constitution itself to grasp that; etc. Franklin's contributions to our history are fascinating, you can learn some very practical things from reading about them. He was also an interesting person — if you want to know why, I suggest you go read about him. That could be the start of something very good in your life.
People who know nothing about science tend to be extremely vulnerable to superstition, and present a load on everyone else as services, security, and technology are all dumbed down (by all means, read that as "crippled") to serve them. This, a thousand times this, sigh. I'm not sure anyone should even be able to earn a driver's license for current vehicles without demonstrating a basic knowledge of the physics relevant to a heavy device on wheels and various road surfaces, as well as impact forces, etc.
People who can't do math struggle with everything from doing their own household budget to sane handling of credit and the grasping of basic statistics, and the abject misuse of the latter by toxic individuals, organizations and systems. Observe the general debt load of the people of this nation, and that of the nation itself. People and politicians and banks treat this as "normal" and "okay"; the people because they really don't know any better and have great difficulty imagining it; the politicians because it benefits them directly to be able to grasp income out of the pockets of the future. Banks because it's a way to parasitize most people who walk in the door to as extreme a level as possible.
People who can't do basic fact checking and collection tend to wrongly evaluate everything from gossip to the news to political stances to false claims from all manner of sources ranging from their neighbors, to the media, to the government.
People who can't read well fail to absorb much of anything beyond the topmost surface level of any subject other than what they do hands-on, constantly.
People who cannot write well fail in communicating with others — in both directions — particularly now that such communication is most often "writing on the net" in one form or another, as here.
People who don't know how this country, and other countries, came by their systems of government commonly make very poor decisions based on nonsensical ideas, often infecting the world via agitprop specialized sources like Breitbart and Fox News.
(US) people who have not read the constitution and also the rich history surrounding it tend to have bizarre ideas about what the constitution is, what rights are in the legal sense, what the three branches of government were actually authorized to do, as opposed to the powers they have arrogated, which the politicians promptly and thoroughly take advantage of — and because of their ignorance, they don't even know that's what's been done to them, and will even cheer it on.
There's more. A lot more. I'll spare you. :)
All of this is about the pursuit of learning, not intelligence. Not (necessarily) about formal education. An autodidact can do as well or better than someone who is run through a programmed educational process. The important thing is to have a broad grasp on the world we live in so that interacting with it benefits not just the individual, but society at large.
Those are some of the reasons why these things really do matter.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 05 2018, @01:05AM
That was excellent. You should archive that and post it elsewhere as well.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Barenflimski on Friday October 05 2018, @02:19AM (14 children)
You are right. Now how do we dumb that down for the Breitbart and FOX crew? These folks do not seem to care one way or another about a common history, unless its their version.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by jmorris on Friday October 05 2018, @03:39AM (13 children)
You probably don't even realize how retarded you sound. It is a pretty indisputable fact that the farther right one goes the more books are getting written, read and debated and they are more serious works the farther Right. Who are the great thinkers on the Left these days? Where does the Left gather to discuss and debate serious works? Not Game of Thrones or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, not some drivel from a TV host whoring a ghostwritten book, real works?
You didn't even read your Chocolate Messiah's "autobiography", 'yall all bought it, sat it on your coffee table and there it sat. Otherwise you guys would have known some things you were SHOCKED at learning later. Like the fact your hero smoked dope, snorted coke and drank like a fish, real equal opportunity substance abuser. Then you learned he ate a dog and couldn't believe it. We were passing around dank memes about those things before he was elected., because we had read it. We read Alinsky's book too, and we have learned many things from it.
Glenn Beck and the Tea Partiers were all about reading the Founding Fathers and rediscovering what had been carefully erased. Laugh at Glenn for being whacky, I certainly do, but have you looked up how many books the guy has produced and the yuge quantity he moves? Lemme give ya a hint, they get endcap placement at Walmart for a reason. Many are assembled with a team of researchers and filled with great argument ammo. And the Right reads em. Ann Coulter is a bomb thrower, but again look at the unbroken string of monster books she has unleashed like clockwork, a lot of them well researched and heavily footnoted. It got so one sided the NYT had to just start deleting a lot of Right leaning books from being listed to stop libraries from being forced to buy so many of the Right's books.
The NRx movement, pretty much created by Moldbug, has as a mantra, "Read old books." Much of his own quite prodigious output was basically glorified book reviews of forgotten works.
Even the really crazy *-Nazis[1] read and discuss massive books. If they aren't reading Hitler's tome they are telling everyone to "REED SEEJ!" in an annoying way. (Siege! is probably as big as Mien Kampf but crazier from the little I have managed to suffer through so far.)
Everywhere one goes on the Right one encounters discussions of serious books. The Left thinks Star Trek is serious literature. The Left is more openly Marxist now but it doesn't look like many are even reading Marx anymore.
[1] Actual Nazis aren't of course a Right movement because Socialists are by definition Left, but the times are insane at the moment and most of em ain't the sharpest implements in the toolbox. But even they read books.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @05:26AM (4 children)
Just because Nazi party had "socialist" in their name makes them as much socialist as it makes Democratic People's Republic of Korea (commonly referred as North-Korea) democratic.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @05:57AM (3 children)
Have you actually looked at the policies of the nazis and compared to those of the people being called socialist today?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday October 05 2018, @12:01PM
Now did I copy this from the "economics of nazism" wiki page or the "democratic party" wiki page?
public works projects, job-procurement programs, subsidized home repair programs, labor service, a guarantee to maintain health care and pensions, "In spite of their rhetoric condemning big business prior to their rise to power", "they increased economic state control through regulations"
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday October 05 2018, @05:32PM (1 child)
Have you actually looked at the policies of the nazis and compared to those of the people being called socialist today?
Yes. There's a very significant lack of genocide in the second group.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @11:53PM
The nazis did not implement their genocide plans until they had already consolidated power and were in a state of war. You need to compare to pre-genocide (ie, 1930s nazis). It is pretty much the same ideas from what I've seen.
(Score: 0, Troll) by aebonyne on Friday October 05 2018, @10:20AM (6 children)
As I generally find myself in a liberal bubble, I tend to have difficulty finding intellectual right-wing sources that are not straw men. I'd be interested in any recommendations for well-argued discussions of right-wing views. You recommended Ann Coulter's and Glenn Beck's books, so I'll check those out (probably starting with the most recent unless you have a better recommendation?). Do you (or anyone else) have other recommendations or pointers to where I could find such recommendations?
Centralization breaks the internet.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @02:10PM (1 child)
Try Mexifornia. [victorhanson.com]
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday October 05 2018, @05:10PM
Haven't read that one so it isn't in my reading list below, but anything by VDH is probably worth a look.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday October 05 2018, @05:01PM (1 child)
As a general rule, the tie in books by TV / radio hosts aren't the best stuff. There are exceptions.
With Coulter, look at the book. If it is basically a collection of columns well you know what you are getting. Just a notch above an Internet troll. Demonic was well researched and just the chapter with the unwhitewashed history of the French revolution is worth the cover price for eye opening power. She was on fire but in a good way. Lots of footnotes to give you leads to more reading material
I haven't read all of her defense of Joe McCarthy (Treason) but while it seems thorough and a good introduction to the idea of rethinking that era's history, gotta recommend Stanton Evan's Blacklisted by History as the definitive work on the topic if you can handle a more scholarly work. With his access to the opened Senate archives and the brief window the end of the Cold War gave him into Soviet records it leaves no doubt that the Senator's sin was failing to comprehend just how much deeper the problem was than an infestation of Communists at the State Dept.
Beck is all over the map. Cutsie Christmas books and other Christian oriented stuff that you can give a pass on, novels, so don't make the mistake of just grabbing the first thing with his name on it. Arguing With Idiots is a good place to start, written while his staff was probably at max, with the radio show and the FNC show bringing in sacks of cash to pay for a crack team. If you aren't already "on the Right side" of the political divide it will prove eye opening that yes we really do have facts on our side; Lots of them. The translated Federalist Papers published under his imprint is a modern marvel. He put out a call on his show one day saying The Federalist was wonderful but modern people found it hard to read because of the drift in English since it was written, and said it would be great if somebody could do a translation. A college student did, submitted it and he published it. Comparing it to the original is fascinating. Search for The Original Argument.
If you want to "read our books" like I'm reading Marx, Alinsky, etc. You want to get away from the currently topical works and the rest of the "stars" and go for core foundational works. Kirk's The Conservative Mind is recommended by everyone on the Right from the cucks at National Review to the hard right; paradoxically this book is where I finally exited Conservatism. It explained it so completely it erased all doubt that I was one. And speaking of NR, while I have problems with them lately, Jonah Goldberg did do some great work in his, to date, magnum opus, Liberal Fascism. That one is still discussed which means it had a real impact. You can't go wrong reading just about any of Bill Buckley's prodigious output either.
Read some of Thomas Sowell's stuff. If you can still get Vision of the Anointed read it, otherwise get the newer aimed at an intro audience Quest for Cosmic Justice So far I haven't went wrong with anything with his name on it though so just grab whatever you can find at your local library.
To understand the Libertarians you of course start with Ayn Rand's Anthem, Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Roll your eyes at the crazy bits and try to understand the rest of the ideas. But eventually you want some meat on those bones and that will lead you to The Mises Institute [mises.org] where you could spend the rest of several lifetimes happily reading interesting stuff. Libertarians write stuff. you should probably only attempt Human Action after some prep, it is difficult and thick but oh Hell yes! Economics is a solved problem after you read that one. A political system that could permit it is the question. And that was where I exited Libertarianism because it doesn't have an answer to that.
To follow Moldbug's recommendation to read old books, why not start with a nice short piece from one of his favorite authors that has instant impact on our modern times. Read Carlyle's Chartism Google Books has it for free. Might also be in one of the collections of Carlyle at Gutenberg.
(Score: 1) by aebonyne on Friday October 05 2018, @07:57PM
Thank you very much for taking to time to write an in-depth reply. I will definitely follow-up on your recommendations.
Centralization breaks the internet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @11:48PM
Two competing types of propaganda don't average out into the truth... Instead you should be asking for the source data/documents that are most important. Also: republicrats, libtards vs retards, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @07:41AM
I went through a lot of right wing literature and media and kept dropping those which were downright absurd, relying on basic lack of education of their readers, or the lack of basic interest in being educated, and jingoistic clap-trap. It is sad to say that after 4 years there aren't any people left to read, except maybe 1 or 2.
It is Bs to think that people on right are debating. They aren't. They are learning basic debating points from these books so they can feel empowered in a debate. Kudos to right, they have learned that 'personal is political'. But let us not get carried away and think they are well read.
Unfortunately left has stopped debating because it thinks it has the power. Even as Trump says some new shit, left is busy demonizing right and deplatforming instead of debating. Instead left has the likes of aristarchus and ikanreed as spokesperson.
So what I say is that fuck the society. Earn your money and spend it on travelling and foreign hookers :)
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday October 05 2018, @02:10PM
No, it is a pretty disputable anecdote covered with insults you do not have the facts to be able to know. [[Citation needed]] "So wrong it's not even right" is a phrase that comes to mind.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by patrick on Friday October 05 2018, @04:40AM
However, it looks like this tests none of that. The examples listed are trivia, completely out of context of their historical implications.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday October 05 2018, @02:11PM
I think it's relevant that those with power like things the way they are. After all, which is easier to control: A population of folks who has the skills to do the math and the critical thinking and can thus recognize BS when they see it, or a mass of ignorant people who believe propaganda if it's done with proper technique?
As a simple example of this, the last thing a credit card company would like is to lend to people who understand the math behind those loans. Far better to have fools who run up several thousand dollars worth of debt at 25+% interest, make the minimum payment, and end up spending 5-6 times as much on interest as the original goods cost. Which means you want most people to not understand the exponential functions involved in doing said math. Entirely coincidentally, a lot of people get through high school without ever really digging into their Algebra 2 course where that sort of thing is covered, and demeaning anybody who does know the math as a hopeless nerd or something.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.