From the NYT: The Dumbed Down Democracy

This is what the class is all about right?

- Click here for the article.

Are you smarter than an immigrant? Can you name, say, all three branches of government or a single Supreme Court justice? Most Americans, those born here, those about to make the most momentous decision in civic life this November, cannot. And most cannot pass the simple test aced by 90 percent of new citizens.

Well, then: Who controlled the Senate during the 2014 election, when control of the upper chamber was at stake? If you answered Dunno at the time, you were with a majority of Americans in the clueless category.

But surely now, when election news saturation is thicker than the humidity around Lady Liberty’s lip, we’ve become a bit more clue-full. I give you Texas. A recent survey of Donald Trump supporters there found that 40 percent of them believe that Acorn will steal the upcoming election.

Acorn? News flash: That community-organizing group has been out of existence for six years. Acorn is gone, disbanded, dead. It can no more steal an election than Donald Trump can pole vault over his Mexican wall.

We know that at least 30 million American adults cannot read. But the current presidential election may yet prove that an even bigger part of the citizenry is politically illiterate — and functional. Which is to say, they will vote despite being unable to accept basic facts needed to process this American life.

. . . The dumbing down of this democracy has been gradual, and then — this year — all at once. The Princeton Review found that the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 were engaged at roughly a high school senior level. A century later, the presidential debate of 1960 was a notch below, at a 10th grade level. By the year 2000, the two contenders were speaking like sixth graders. And in the upcoming debates — “Crooked Hillary” against “Don the Con” — we’ll be lucky to get beyond preschool potty talk.

The I Side With Quiz

I asked students to take this quiz for the week one written assignment.

- Click here for it.

It's meant to get students to think about which issues are currently topical, where they might stand on them, and find out which candidates they should consider supporting as a result. I like that the quiz also asks what priority they give to the issue, as well as background info on the issue itself, hopefully that'll help us all become more knowledgeable about them - that'll give us some items to focus on in class. I'll use it to figure out which news stories to highlight as well.

Later this week, I'll compile results so we'll get a sense about which candidates students are - or should - support in the current campaign,

What do we know about what's in the federal budget?

Not much apparently:

- Click here.

Many Americans have strong opinions about policy issues shaping the presidential campaign, from immigration to Social Security. But their grasp of numbers that underlie those issues can be tenuous.

Americans vastly overestimate the percentage of fellow residents who are foreign-born, by more than a factor of two, and the percentage who are in the country illegally, by a factor of six or seven. They overestimate spending on foreign aid by a factor of 25, according to a 2010 survey. And more than two-thirds of those who responded to a 2010 Zogby online poll underestimated the part of the federal budget that goes to Social Security or Medicare and Medicaid.

“It’s pretty apparent that Americans routinely don’t know objective facts about the government,” says Joshua Clinton, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University.
Americans’ numerical misapprehension can be traced to a range of factors, including where they live, the news they consume, the political rhetoric they hear and even the challenges of numbers themselves. And it isn’t even clear how much this matters: Telling people the right numbers often doesn’t change their views.

What do Americans know and not know?

I like to begin each semester with a look at the latest studies measuring the level of knowledge American have of basic facts about government and politics. The Pew Research Center measures political knowledge regularly. Aside from studying how much people know overall, they look at difference between people based on age, education and party affiliation, among other things.

- If you want to take one of their quizzes, click here.

Here are links to some of recent studies:

- What the Public Knows — In Pictures, Words, Maps and Graphs.
- From ISIS to Unemployment: What Do Americans Know?
- What the Public Knows about the Political Parties.

Here are graphs from the last study. It shows only slim majorities are aware of what positions each major party takes on major issues - which can be a problem if you want to cast meaningful votes.

From the Washington Post: Arizona will require high school students to pass citizenship test to graduate. Can you pass?

They want their high school students to know as much as newly naturalized citizens.

- Click here for the article.

Arizona high school students will have to pass the same test that immigrants must take to obtain citizenship before they graduate under a new law signed Thursday by Gov. Doug Ducey (R).

The first-of-its-kind law will require students to take the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization civics test, a set of 100 basic questions on U.S. government and history. Students will have to get 60 of the 100 questions correct in order to graduate.

The measure passed the state House and Senate in a single day. It’s one of the first measures Ducey, inaugurated earlier this week, signed into law.

Arizona is just the first state to require citizenship tests for high school students. The Civics Education Initiative is pursuing similar legislation in dozens of states, with the goal of mandating the test in all 50 states by Sept. 17, 2017 — the 230th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution. In Arizona, CEI’s effort was spearheaded by former senators Dennis DeConcini (D) and Jon Kyl (R).

In total, 18 states are likely to consider civics test requirements this year. North Dakota legislators this week advanced their own version through a state House committee.

We'll take some of this in class.

From the Monkey Cage: The decline of local news is threatening citizen engagement

The authors find that the loss of local newspapers - and presumably less information about local matters - leads to less interest and engagement. The problems this posses for "keeping the republic" seem obvious.

Just as interesting, the authors argue that the decline in competitive races for the US House of Representatives has led to less coverage of these races, which in turn has led to less knowledge about them and then less engagement.

And there's more: The increasing number of options available for information has meant that those who follow politics know more and more because they have access to more information and those who want to avoid it have other places to go. They know less and less.

File this under: "important thing to read"

- Click here for the article.

The author does link to this cool cat video.

From the New Republic: The Greatest Threat to Our Liberty Is Local Governments Run Amok: And only a strong federal government can stop them

Here's a provocative article.

It's something we can talk about in both 2305 and 2306, and it reminds me of  counter-intuitive point we will see in Federalist #10. James Madison though that the lack of diverse points of view in local governments were more likely to allow for tyrannical majorities to emerge and threaten unpopular minorities.

Being a wealthy landowner, as were the rest of the Founders, he was worried about what the property less would do to the propertied class. They were in fact a numerical minority. But the same logic applies to any minority group. Local governments - he claims - are dangerous, and the federal government is needed to limit that danger.

The fault lies in the increased number of states that are dominated by one political party, the demise of the press and an increase in voter ignorance about the working of local government. We are not really aware of the abuses happening at the local level because we tune them out.

This is worth a good discussion in class, but its worth noting that a key point he makes is contrary to what we saw in a previous post suggesting that local government are very responsive to the preferences of the electorate. But if the government is responsive only to the majority, and the majority wishes to violate the rights of the minority, there's little to stop them other than the state or federal government.

Here's a bit from the article - note the use of the terms autocracy and oligarchy.

These are boom times for provincial autocrats. In many chunks of the country, state and local politics were once a competitive affair; there was an opposing political party ready to pounce on its foe’s malfeasance. That sort of robust rivalry, however, hardly exists in an era in which blue and red states have become darker shades of themselves. Thirty-seven states now have unified governments, the most since the early ’50s. And in many of these places, there’s not even a remote chance that the ruling party will be deposed in the foreseeable future. The rise of one-party government has been accompanied by the evisceration of the local press and the near-extinction of metro-desk muckrakers (14,000 newsroom jobs have vanished in the last six years), crippling the other force most likely to call attention to official misdeeds.

The end of local media hasn’t just removed a watchdog; it has helped to complete a cultural reversal. Once upon a time, Jefferson and Tocqueville could wax lyrical about local government, which they viewed as perfectly in sync with the interests of its yeoman citizenry. Whether this arcadia ever truly existed is debatable. But it certainly hasn’t persisted into the age of mass media. Nowadays, most Americans care much more passionately about national politics than they do about the governments closer to their homes. They may harbor somewhat warmer feelings toward states and localities, but those sentiments are grounded in apathy. Most Americans can name their president. But according to a survey conducted by Georgetown University’s Dan Hopkins, only 35 percent can identify their mayor. The nostrum that local government is actually closer to the people is now just a hollow piece of antique rhetoric.

With so many instances of unobstructed one-party rule, conditions are ripe for what the political scientist Jessica Trounstine calls “political monopoly”—officials and organizations who have so effectively defeated any potential predators that they can lazily begin to gorge. She writes: “When politicians cease to worry about reelection, they become free to pursue government policy that does not reflect constituent preferences. They acquire the ability to enrich themselves and their supporters or pursue policies that would otherwise lead to their electoral defeat.”

Some comments on the political knowledge quiz

I've graded all of the written assignments sent in on time - and few sent a bit late. I took 5 points off for late work, but some of the late replies were very A worthy.

Most of you admitted to having low levels of political information - and admittedly some of the questions were a bit odd. The question about age distribution in Nigeria for example. But if you read anything about Africa - in comparison with the other nations - you should have been able to infer that it is a very young country. Lots of kids get born, and lots of older people die sooner than they should. That has a major impact on governance. Its doesn't bode well for stability.

You may have clicked on this on your own already, but the center summarizes the findings and provides a graphic with what questions the general public got right and what they got wrong:



They coupled this with a break down by age groups as well, so we can get an idea about what questions the 18-29 year old age group - which most of you belong to - got right, especially in comparison to older folks like me.

There were only three questions the youngest age group performed better on than the older generation. Those on the states with same-sex marriage, the age distribution in Nigeria, and Google Glass. The first and the last make some sense since they are at least indirectly related to hi-tech. I have no idea about Nigeria.

All groups blew the question on Dow Jones, which could be problematic. Even though the Dow is an imperfect measure of the state of the economy, it does tend to track how the economy has ebbed and flowed over the past few years. Not knowing which of the graphs was correct is the same as not knowing when the financial crash occurred and how the overall economy has fared since then.

We should revisit this topic from time to time over this semester. Is it significant that most people can only answer a handful of these questions correctly?

Dont know much about Roe v Wade

If you're under 30 anyway:



Source: Thirteen charts that explain how Roe v. Wade changed abortion rights.

The public knows little about the Republican field and the nominating process

This continues is an ongoing theme on this blog. Do people have the knowledge necessary to make the decisions necessary to sustain a democratic republic? What do we know and what do we not know?

More bad news from the Pew Research Center - via the Washington Post:

A new Pew Research Center poll suggests that most voters have little idea about even the most basic facts regarding the backgrounds of the men seeking the Republican presidential nomination this year.

Pretty basic stuff right? Um, no.

Just 43 percent of all registered voters — these people are actually registered to vote — got at least three of those questions right.

Upcoming students ought to be prepared to discuss whether this presents a real problem.

Here's a chart from the Pew report:

Can you pass an 8th grade civics test?

Click here and find out.

The Latest Measure of Political Knowledge

From the Pew Research Center:

The public is generally aware of basic facts about several recent national and international news stories, but is much less knowledgeable about current politics in Washington, according to the Pew Research Center’s latest News IQ survey.

About seven-in-ten know that Hillary Clinton currently serves as U.S. secretary of state (73%) and that Moammar Gadhafi is the leader of Libya (71%). An even higher percentage (80%) knows that that the “No Child Left Behind” law deals with education policy.

Yet Americans continue to struggle with questions about Congress and its leaders. Just 38% correctly say that Republicans hold a majority of seats in the House – and not in the Senate or the full Congress. Shortly after the midterm elections in November, slightly more (46%) knew that the Republicans had a majority only in the House.

And only about four-in-ten (43%) are able to correctly identify John Boehner as House speaker; 19% say incorrectly that Nancy Pelosi is still speaker of the House. In November, shortly after the GOP won the House, 38% named Boehner as the presumptive speaker and 13% named Pelosi.

Don't Know Much About Politics

Here's a neat little read as we grear up for 2301s discussion of public opinion.

CNN Poll: Americans flunk budget IQ test:

If you think cutting the government's budget is as easy as taking the ax to some unpopular federal programs, a new national poll suggests that you should think again.

According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday, most Americans think that the government spends a lot more money than it actually does on such unpopular programs as foreign aid and public broadcasting.

The poll's release comes one week before current funding for the government runs out. If there is no budget agreement between congressional lawmakers by next Friday, some government programs and offices may shut down.

"The public has a better idea of how much the government spends on programs like Social Security and Medicare, but there is a related problem - cutting them has little public support," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "The result: cutting unpopular programs would probably not cut the deficit very much, and cutting the deficit would probably require cuts in programs that Americans like."

Campaigns v. Facts: How Do People Learn About Politics and Government?

A student sent me the following commentary touching on inaccuracies in the current campaign regarding the bank bailout (it was signed by President Bush, not President Obama) and other topical items. It has a political slant, but it may hold the answer to a question we will cover in 2301: Why are so many people ignorant about basic facts about government and politics?

Could it be that most people learn what they know about politics through political advertising? Makes my job tougher. Campaigns are oriented towards winning elections, not enhancing general knowledge. And they are very good at what they do.

Political Knowledge and Political Ideology

A worthy read:

...If we want to know the true impact of political knowledge on political opinions, it's necessary to test that impact while controlling for other variables in a randomly selected sample of adults. Political scientist Scott Althaus has actually done this in his book Collective Preferences and Democratic Politics. He shows that, controlling for a variety of demographic and other variables, increased knowledge makes people more socially liberal and economically conservative (i.e. - more libertarian). That does not mean that high political knowledge necessarily turns you into a libertarian. Far from it. It does mean that it is likely to make you more libertarian than you would be otherwise. The pattern is not completely consistent across all public policy questions. For example, greater knowledge reduces opposition to taxation (I suspect because antitax arguments are less counterintuitive than the protax ones). But it does hold true across most issues.

Finally, low knowledge levels are just one of two major negative effects of rational political ignorance. The second is poor evaluation of the information that we do possess, what economist Bryan Caplan has called "rational irrationality." As I discuss in this article, the fact that there is little incentive to acquire political information for the purposes of becoming a "better" voter implies that most of the information people do learn is acquired for other purposes. Many of these purposes - such as entertainment value and confirmation of preexisting prejudices - are antithetical to rational, unbiased evaluation of evidence. In my article, I explain how rational irrationality may account for the fact that most citizens tend to discount information that goes against their preexisting views and only read and watch those political media that reinforce those views, while ignoring opposing positions. Such behavior is inexplicable if the goal is to get at the truth in order to be a better voter; it is perfectly rational, however, if truth-seeking is not the primary objective.

SBOE Will Review Texas' K-12 Social Science Curriculum

This is guaranteed to stir up trouble.

Does the Word "Socialism" Mean Anything?

Not among the American public. Though public opinion polls are collecting information about the public's attitudes towards the economy and whether they prefer capitalism, socialism, or a free market, there are reasons to believe that people have no consistent understanding of what these terms mean.

I've asked these questions in class before and found that "socialism" general equates to "bad things that Obama is going to do as president."

While my students consider the nature of public opinion in America, it is worth considering whether people have enough background about basic facts to form well founded opinions, rather than superficial off the cuff responses to questions, or repetitions of comments heard elsewhere.

My 2301's should consider the post linked to above required reading.