A couple of weeks ago a friend
forwarded an op-ed from The New York
Times. Written by Timothy Egan, (author of The
Worst Hard Time and The Big Burn),
it was one of many opinion pieces being circulated about fake news and
how we as a country can’t seem to get enough of it.
Part of Egan's essay had to do with how
ignorant many of us are about basic civics. He blames our educational system,
and it set me wondering if it’s true that we no longer learn about our own
country in primary school.
Egan reminds us that one of the
reasons we have public schools is to maintain an informed citizenry. “Up until
the 1960s,” he writes, “it was common for students to take three separate
courses in civics and government before they got out of high school. Now only a
handful of states require proficiency in civics as a condition of high school
graduation.”
Frankly, I found this hard to
believe, so I conducted a bit of local research.
Wyoming’s Department of Education is
governed by a statute (W.S. 21-9- 102) which requires all publicly-funded
schools in the state to “give instruction in the essentials of the United
States constitution and the constitution of the state of Wyoming, including the
study of and devotion to American institutions and ideals.”
In order to receive a high school
diploma, a student must take at least three years of civics-related coursework
before grade eight and one year in the secondary grades. The state has
developed proficiency standards that help teachers assign grades according to
how well students show they’ve learned the material.
At Jackson Hole High
School, students take three courses: U.S. history as freshmen, world history as sophomores and
government as seniors.
All of this sounds like plenty of instruction to
prepare students to become informed citizens. But whether we have a high school
diploma or not, it’s hard to believe that many of us don’t know who our
congressional representatives and senators are, or what the Supreme Court does.
According to many national polls, that’s the case.
How does this happen? Are students
so bored by the material they sleep through class and the instructor passes
them anyway? Is some kind of peer pressure at work similar to that often cited
for girls doing well at math until the middle grades?
Part of the problem I see is a
disconnect between what the schools are supposed to do and the funding they get
to do it. Some state legislators are loathe to fund the schools adequately,
insisting that they continue to do more with less.
This kind of approach is exactly the opposite of what resulted in America (touted by both liberals and conservatives) of being the most educated, enlightened and innovative globally—and it runs counter to this country having public lands and a heritage of stewardship that are the envy of the world.
Doing more with less has
been a mantra of the underfunded—and increasingly demoralized— U.S. Forest Service for decades, and it’s been
obvious to me over the years that without well-funded private partners and a
good deal of creative financing, doing anything, let alone more, was next to
impossible.
"Doing more with less has been a mantra of the underfunded—and increasingly demoralized— U.S. Forest Service for decades, and it’s been obvious to me over the years that without well-funded private partners and a good deal of creative financing, doing anything, let alone more, was next to impossible."
The not-so-hidden agenda for both public schools and public land:
starve them until they expire. What will take their places, who knows. I’m not
sure I want to find out.
The do-more-with-less attitude isn’t
true of every state and federal legislator, of course, but a vocal and influential minority
is able to keep school funding to a minimum, even in flush years. They seem to
be opposed to everything about government—except themselves. And there is now a sneering and pervasive attitude toward education, as if it is wrong to be smart and elitist to challenge alternative facts that cannot withstand scrutiny.
Given the state of school funding, overworked
teachers spend their own salaries on supplies as their classes grow larger,
place buckets under roof leaks, and bring food in for the kids who didn’t get
breakfast. Actual learning is supposed to happen in there somewhere, producing the informed citizenry that Tim Egan and the rest of us hope for.
More than one civics expert has
suggested that we treat citizenship like getting a driver’s license. You’re
tested on American history, the Constitution, and basic geography as part of a
rite of passage when you reach the age to vote.
Immigrants have to pass such a
test, and over 97 percent of them do. According to a 2012 study done at Xavier
University, a third of native-born citizens fail.
Where is human evolution taking us? Image courtesy John Potter, artist (www.johnpotterstudio.com)
Does it matter if there are some
ignoramuses among us? There is so much to know, so much to forget and we are
all so busy. Michael Ford, the director of Xavier University’s Center for the
American Dream, summarized the problem, and it’s one that that affects us all.
“Civic illiteracy makes us more
susceptible to manipulation and abuses of power,” Ford stated. He added that he
didn’t expect people to know every detail. “Does it matter if we don’t know how
many constitutional amendments there are?” he asks. “No. But almost 60 percent
don’t even know what an amendment is.”
Okay, smarty, I said. Let’s see how
well you do. I took a few of the practice tests offered online by Citizenship
and Immigration Services (USCIS.gov). You get 20 questions but you can take as
many practice tests as you want, until you’ve either grown bored or
embarrassed. I missed 2 out of 40 questions, mostly by overthinking them. Most
of them were pretty darn easy for anyone who pays the least attention to what’s
going on in the world.
Further, the test is multiple-choice so if you kind of
know the answer you can get it right by process of elimination. I recommend
giving it a try. Nobody sees what you get wrong, and it’s kind of fun.
When you answer a question on the
test, there is usually a little blurb about it so you can learn more. The U.S.
Constitution, for instance, is the longest-standing constitution anywhere in
the world. Shouldn’t we be proud of that, and work to keep it a vital document
for the present day? Knowing something about it would be a start.
People who know little about our government
and why it matters are unlikely to vote, and statistics about our participation
rate in elections bears this out. 136.6 million Americans voted in 2016, or
55.5 percent of the total voting-age population.
According to a Pew Research Center
study, this places the U.S. “behind most of its peers in the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, most of whose members are highly developed,
democratic states. Looking at the most recent nationwide election in each of
the 35 OECD member nations, the U.S. placed 28th.”
"If people are as ignorant as the polls suggest and hardly find it worth their while to vote, how can we expect them to care about public land, wilderness or wildlife?"
If people are as ignorant as the
polls suggest and hardly find it worth their while to vote, how can we expect
them to care about public land, wilderness or wildlife? These are part of who
we are as Americans, and it seems we ought to be as proud of having led the way
in environmental conservation as we are of our enlightened constitution. The
natural treasures we inherited from our forebears are not to be taken for
granted, especially during a time when they are under attack.
When Yellowstone was proclaimed the
first national park, no one was thinking in terms of ecosystems. But the same
forces that opposed its creation are at work today. Our heritage of wild land
is at risk for lack of diligent defense, as are the tenets of our constitution.
Here’s a quote from one of my
heroes, Rachel Carson, who expresses the concern better than I can. “I believe
natural beauty has a necessary place in the spiritual development of any
individual or any society. I believe that whenever we destroy beauty, or
whenever we substitute something man-made and artificial for a natural feature
of the earth, we have retarded some part of man’s spiritual growth.”
Canada geese flying serenely through sunrise on Yellowstone Lake. How many citizens would be able to describe some of the natural history phenomena occurring in this scene? Photo courtesy NPS / Jacob W. Frank
She wrote those words long before
people started stepping into traffic because they are focused on their mobile
devices. Before the multiple distractions that occupy our attention daily. Developers
of virtual reality platforms that allow users to create imagined lives in an
imaginary world go so far as to state that the physical world will come to seem
like an “archaic, loveable place” but one that is no longer crucial.
No thanks. The real world is good
enough for me. But many of my fellow citizens plug into these web-based worlds,
finding solace and escape from the duties, distractions or the mundane sameness
of their real lives. Or else they accomplish approximately the same thing by
spending hours on Facebook instead of going for a walk.
These trends make us increasingly
removed from our home planet and the dependence we have on it, replacing
natural beauty with the artificial, the priceless with the ordinary.
We know
every detail of some internet game but nothing about the wildflowers that grow
beside the road. We turn away from the real world and its problems, from
climate change (nothing we can do about it, right?) to saving the last patch of
open space in an urban neighborhood (it just sold, it’s zoned
commercial—nothing we can do about it, right?). Our view of life becomes circumscribed,
our imaginations stunted. We feel
helpless and hopeless.
"We know every detail of some internet game but nothing about the wildflowers that grow beside the road. We turn away from the real world and its problems, from climate change (nothing we can do about it, right?) to saving the last patch of open space in an urban neighborhood (it just sold, it’s zoned commercial—nothing we can do about it, right?). Maybe what we are is simply lazy."
Maybe what we are is simply lazy.
When I say ‘we’ I don’t mean everybody, of course. I’m talking about that part
of the collective we that has reason
to feel hopeless, isn’t motivated to try to change, and didn’t learn the basics
in school. That cadre can include us all from time to time.
Lack of education isn’t the only
thing that influences what we care about. Each of us holds knowledge that feels
meaningful. Our brains can’t easily contain all that comes our way, so we have
to choose.
I worry that what we are choosing
to ignore may be more important than we realize. We’re turning our backs, in
favor of fake and entertaining news, on the things that sustain us as
Americans. Our history and values, and those government institutions that have
done the people’s work for many decades.
Our sense of fairness to others. The pursuit
of happiness depends on having decent shelter, enough to eat, access to clean
air and water and someplace quiet and leafy to sit once in a while. As the
wealth gap increases more Americans lack these basic needs.
Some of us remember those images
from the Apollo 8 mission, the blue earth in black space as it set over the
shadow of the moon. Those photos said something profound about the gift we have
in the real world. People predicted that after everyone had seen that picture
we’d stop polluting the air and water and stop killing each other.
I guess human nature trumps a
photograph, but wouldn’t it be nice to imagine that we would come to appreciate
this gift and all the others so freely bestowed by the planet we inhabit? It’s
a gift we can easily destroy as we rush around in our busy lives. One that disappears
quietly, unnoticed, until it’s too far gone to retrieve.
What can we do about it? The
dictionary defines civics as the study of the privileges and obligations of
citizens. We are heavy on the privilege side, so perhaps it’s time to think
more about those obligations. Voting for example. A privilege many people
worldwide would love to have.
We’re urged to contact our elected representatives
about issues that concern us, though often that can feel pointless when their
minds are made up and nothing citizens have to say will change them. We can focus
on county commissioners and school boards and town councils. For those too shy
or busy to show up at meetings, there’s email. Pick an hour out of the week to
do our civic duty and after a year we each will have spent 52 hours as an
active and engaged citizen.
In a country that prides itself on its government
structure as a representative democracy, it is the least we can do.
We may go down in flames on the
losing side of arguments about government and the environment, but I’ll cast my
lot with these current underdogs, convinced that we will be on the right side
of history.
About Susan Marsh
Susan Marsh spent three decades with the U.S. Forest Service and is today an award-winning writer living in Jackson Hole.
