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posted by janrinok on Monday January 27 2020, @05:46PM   Printer-friendly

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Political polarization among Americans has grown rapidly in the last 40 years—more than in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia or Germany—a phenomenon possibly due to increased racial division, the rise of partisan cable news and changes in the composition of the Democratic and Republican parties.

That's according to new research co-authored by Jesse Shapiro, a professor of political economy at Brown University. The study, conducted alongside Stanford University economists Levi Boxell and Matthew Gentzkow, was released on Monday, Jan. 20, as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper.

In the study, Shapiro and colleagues present the first ever multi-nation evidence on long-term trends in "affective polarization"—a phenomenon in which citizens feel more negatively toward other political parties than toward their own. They found that in the U.S., affective polarization has increased more dramatically since the late 1970s than in the eight other countries they examined—the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, Norway and Sweden.

"A lot of analysis on polarization is focused on the U.S., so we thought it could be interesting to put the U.S. in context and see whether it is part of a global trend or whether it looks more exceptional," Shapiro said. "We found that the trend in the U.S. is indeed exceptional."

Using data from four decades of public opinion surveys conducted in the nine countries, the researchers used a so-called "feeling thermometer" to rate attitudes on a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 reflected no negative feelings toward other parties. They found that in 1978, the average American rated the members of their own political party 27 points higher than members of the other major party. By 2016, Americans were rating their own party 45.9 points higher than the other party, on average. In other words, negative feelings toward members of the other party compared to one's own party increased by an average of 4.8 points per decade.

The researchers found that polarization had also risen in Canada, New Zealand and Switzerland in the last 40 years, but to a lesser extent. In the U.K., Australia, Germany, Norway and Sweden, polarization decreased.

More information: Levi Boxell et al, Cross-Country Trends in Affective Polarization, (2020). DOI: 10.3386/w26669


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  • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday January 27 2020, @07:18PM (3 children)

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Monday January 27 2020, @07:18PM (#949486) Journal
    Public school in Canada can be very government work d - if the parents are actively involved in things that count (homework, not sports)
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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday January 27 2020, @08:42PM (2 children)

    by Gaaark (41) on Monday January 27 2020, @08:42PM (#949549) Journal

    Yup: you have to be VERY active in your kids education: fortunately, my wife is an EA in the system, with an educational background in Behavioural Science. She knows how to get the worst kids in the system to get the work done (kids who in other Schools were TRASHING the classes and hitting kids and teachers). Unfortunately, she often has 9 of the worst kids that the teachers making $100,000 don't know how to deal with.
    She SHOULD be earning a teacher's salary, but....

    Our daughter was dyslexic and hated reading: we bought her the Betty and Veronica books...LOTS of them and she learned to love reading.

    But she's made the biggest difference with our son: because she knows how the system works from the inside, she knew when to push for what he needed (moderately to severly autistic) and when things were the best we could expect and she taught the rest at home.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @11:47PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @11:47PM (#949667)

      One of my firends is a literacy consultant for a regional education unit and repeatedly has the same conversation. "These kids can't/hate to read. Fix them." "Have you tried giving them books about topics they are interested in." "That would be a waste of time because they wouldn't read them." "Try that while I get the RTI paperwork drawn up, then we can see if they need an 504 or IEP."

      It is almost magical how often she gets the email saying the problem is no longer a problem. Or that the students they claimed needed a level 3 LRE modification in an IEP can get away with a 504 due to their improvement.

      • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday January 28 2020, @03:02AM

        by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Tuesday January 28 2020, @03:02AM (#949794) Journal
        Comic books gave generations a reason to read. Whether it was superheroes in the bedroom or Archie digests in the can, everyone read them.

        Everyone, no matter their age, read the Archie digests.

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