Newsweek a magazine I would never actually subscribe to, on the theory that I might save a tree or two, offered some poll results that suggest that Americans just aren't the brightest of lights. There is a summary of a global/cultural literacy poll here. The article admits that the results were disheartening and Newsweek being Newsweek, only gave gentle admonishments to any reader who happened upon the article.
Among the highlights were that Americans just didn't do such a grand job at answering science, medicine, and geography questions. They were pretty competent in the realm of popular culture. I mean who doesn't watch American Idol? I don't.
How many Americans know who our largest trading partners are? Big shocker two of the top three trading partners are Canada and Mexico. Yeah, those two countries the United States share a continent with. That information in abstract might not have much concrete impact for those that took the Newsweek poll and were found to be lacking in geography. I still have vivid memories of working at a local museum back in Canada 20 years ago and meeting some Americans there for a tour. They wanted to know how I felt about Canada being a communist country and whether our school system was run by Godless communists who hated prayer. I told them quite politely that the whole communism thing was working out quite well for us and that the communists who ran our school system seemed rather nice. They weren't prepared for mannered answers to their questions and spent the rest of the visit whispering to one another and glancing nervously at me. I recall wondering how the hell America became a world power. Was everybody there still freaking about isms and blatantly uninformed? That was in 1989 or 1990, and I had no inkling that I would one day be living in the US and still asking myself those same questions.
Isn't that "elitist" thinking? When the Cultural Literacy debate entered the public realm during the 80's that was one of the charges made against E D Hirsh. Many saw Hirsh's attempt to broadly paint the basics of a core buffet of knowlwedge that every American should know as being too Eurocentric and too closely aligned with hegemonic assumptions about what was "important."
Alan Bloom added an unexpected twist by firmly attacking and bemoaning the vulgar influence of liberalism on university edcuation and popular culture. The Closing of the American Mind became the ultimate intellectual jerk off for the the emerging Neo-Con movement in popular dialouge in the US. If you had not read the book you just couldn't call yourself a rebellious anti-establisment conservative.
This is not a snappy diary about how the writer is so much smarter than the masses. I have done an IQ test in recent years and my score couldn't even get me a job as a waitress at the Mensa cafe never mind a conversation with any members. But Goddamn, are Americans just too dumb to realize they are dumb?
Here is a pretty comprehensive quiz that will help you find out what your weak areas are in Global awareness. My guess: a few Kossacks are probably freaky genious types and will do quite well as opposed to the prole like creaky neuron deficient qualities I have sailed through life on.
Why aren't we brighter, more engaged, touched by a bit of intellectual hunger as a nation? Ultimately does out lack of curiosity about ourselves and others simply help to perpetuate existing power structures that many of us in leftist/lib blogland rail so stenuously against? I have a few ideas. No doubt there are more than a few credible ones.
American exceptionalism, rather than spurrring people on to greater accomplishments has dulled us and made us assume we are still in the postion of being able to offer the world wonderful things. I don't subscribe to the doctrine myself because I was not raised here. I had the experience of growing up in a country that had much in common with the US but was very aware it was not a world power and never would be. You have a tendency to share and negotiate more with the other kids when you aren't the biggest one. It isn't a matter of being better it is a matter of survival. Americans are so involved in their own myths that they no longer believe that they need to exercise simple inquisitiveness. If you aren't just a little bit nosey about other folks you don't have much motivation to study them. Americans would rather study themselves, talk about themselves, and reassure themselves about how great their country is than actually do anything to make it so. Why bother studying about the history of another country when you know they want to be just like America anyway? What does it matter if you aren't clear about the fuzzy ever changing geography of the outside world when most of those inhabitants practise weird religions and speak tongue twisting languages that make your lips sore?
The quaint vaguely naive notions about being "well rounded" have been obliterated by the increasing compartmentalization of technology and the emergence of the consumer over the citizen.
I am an RN, do I really need to know about this guy:
in order to give chemotherapy?
No, he won't help me give the chemotherapy, but RNs are all students of humanity and amatuer pyschologists, and even a casual reader of Shakespear will be struck by how little people have changed over the years. He might just assist me in comprehending the driving motivations, greivances, fears, and hopes that my patients have.
Consumers tend to lack intellectual curiosity because the greatest good they can strive for is more stuff. If they get their stuff what happens beyond the realm of their world has little impact on them unless it impinges on the abiltiy to consume. Gas prices bother Americans, Darfur does not. Now for many working Americans, high gas prices impair their ability to actually function they don't make enough to even qualify as consumers. Consumer Americans are mad about gas prices because it will be more expensive to go to the mall to buy those shoes made by slave/indigent labour in China. Consumer Americans aren't going to stop buying those shoes because they might be knock off versions of something a celebrity wears and every consumer American secretly thinks they could be a celebrity. In a consumer society, celebrities make more sense to us than those who strive to be citizens. Celebrities don't actually do anything they play to our lack of intellectual curiosity and reassure us that it is not necessary. We are happy when cozy authoritarian figures step up to do our thinking for us.
Citizens tend to indulge in the what ifs because for one reason or another they have become weary with their consumerism. Once you start asking why and what if all the illusions that American exceptionalism, casual and cheery ignorance, and innocent superiority foster unease.
Confession: I think I am realistically caught between the casual semi-consciousness of the consumer and the hyper vigilant citizen. I have much work to do on myself.
The problem with Americans is that many of us don't know what we don't know and the folks who display that disheartening lack of knowledge in the Newsweek polls end up like this:
A little general knowledge, a touch of cultural/global literacy even if we disagree about the content, makes us a bit less malleable, a touch cranky and ready for change that we design not something designed for us.