He believes that there are "five defining characteristics of [American] stupidity" including sheer ignorance ("Ignorance of critical facts about important events in the news"), negligence ("the disinclination to seek reliable sources of information about important news events"), wood-headedness ("the inclination to believe what we want to believe regardless of the facts"), shortsidedness ("The support of public policies that are mutually contradictory, or contrary to the country's long-term interests") and boneheadedness ("The susceptibility to meaningless phrases, stereotypes, irrational biases, and simplistic diagnoses and solutions that play on our hopes and fears").
The fact is, Shenkman's argument of the "ignorance" of the American voter is unconstructive. In demonstrating American ignorance, he describes with polls and studies how little many people in the US know about basic American history and aspects of our government. But Shenkman provides little explanation behind this lack of knowledge; instead he seems set on simply pointing out American ignorance.
If many Americans are "ignorant," this phenomenon didn't emerge in a vacuum. There has to be factors within our society that shape this trend for which Shenkman chooses to ignore and instead points to it as practically an inherant trait for many Americans. Shenkman doesn't discuss how significant issues like class (besides a few passing remarks), race, and/or gender may play in this "ignorance" or even the role of public education and its teaching of American history and civics.
This is especially true about youth whom Shenkman singles out as especially ignorant and disaffected by politics (minus the surge in recent youth vote during the Presidential primaries that he mentions) and news. But the level of civic and political knowledge youth receive in public school is heavily dependent on one's background. A recent report from CIRCLE, a nonpartisan research center on youth civic engagement and civic education, about public schools and civic education concluded "that a student’s race and academic track, and a school’s average socioeconomic status (SES) determines the availability of the school-based civic learning opportunities that promote voting and broader forms of civic engagement." According to the report:
students in higher-income school districts are up to twice as likely as those from average-income districts to learn how laws are made and how Congress works, for example. They are more than one-and-a-half times as likely to report having political debates and panel discussions.Such varied access to school-based civic education correlates with levels of political knowledge and participation among youth.
But, overall in Western industrialized democracy, youth political knowledge and engagement has been in decline in the past years, though more significantly among Americans. Yet the emphasis for political participation is much different in the US than other Western democracies which, according to another CIRCLE report, is important in understanding differences in political knowledge. American youth are encouraged through school to do more voluntary, nonpartisan activities such as community service which is believed to be the "seedbed for political participation" as opposed to engagement in the political process through party membership and mobilization among youths in other Western countries. As a result, the former inculcates less political knowledge than the latter. Thus if we're going to consider American "ignorance," as voters and citizens, we should try to improve how we're taught civics and encourage political engagement through school.
American ignorance, Shenkman claims, extends to many increasingly not seeking out various outlets of news in print, TV and on the internet. But if we're talking about our mass media, the corporate run entity that controls much of the news, how much do we actually learn about important issues. The most obvious failure of our mainstream news to inform the public was during the lead up to the 2003 Iraq invasion. These outlets, in print and on TV, all practically fell in line with the Bush administration's propaganda effort to build up public support for the war. Despite this fact, Shenkman has the nerve to blame the initial popular support for the 2003 US invasion on American ignorance.
But this inability of our mainstream media to adequately inform the public doesn't just stop with this notable disaster. During the Presidential primaries, a Harvard report of the mainstream media's political coverage in print, TV and radio, found that it "offered Americans relatively little information about [candidates] records or what they would do if elected" with a predominant coverage of fundraising and tactics despite the fact that, in spite of what Shenkman contends of American ignorance, an overwhelming "eight-in-ten of Americans say they want more coverage of the candidates’ stances on issues, and majorities want more on the record and personal background, and backing of the candidates, more about lesser-known candidates and more about debates." So if less people are seeking out mainstream news outlets, it may be less abt their ignorance and more about an uninformative media that alienates their consumers.
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