Once or twice a week we watch a TV news segment where a reporter interviews a random sample of people on the street. Sometimes he asks about current events. Other times he asks about basic history or facts that should be common knowledge about famous historic figures. Sometimes he interviews students on college campuses (for example, Harvard). Other times he interviews people on the streets of major cities, as well as beaches, theaters and ball parks. The responses he elicits are both fascinating and terrifying
One consistent characteristic of the responses is that most people answer incorrectly about very basic questions. They can’t name the vice president of the United States, for example, or don’t know the locations of many countries that are at the forefront of the news and have been for a while. The second most obvious characteristic that threads through most of the responses is that most of the interviewees lack significant passion to know what’s going in the world or to understand the consequences of current events.
In many respects what is being shown in these interviews is the cumulative result of decades of student conditioning through our educational processes, primarily those of higher education. These conditioning processes de-emphasize the search for truth, replacing the value of truth and morality — and even the notion of patriotism — with an undifferentiated pluralism that celebrates “difference” and reduces everything —including historical facts — to opinion.
In the vast majority of American colleges, students fortunate enough to enter college with traditional, conservative or patriotic convictions or values quickly discover they are outgunned by the professorial elite. In order to survive, they quickly extricate their personal values from the educational process and cruise through the educational process without ever arguing in defense of their beliefs. In due time both their passions and their intellect atrophy.
You can argue that some students lose their convictions while others disguise them to survive their academic careers. In the end, however, it doesn’t matter. The result is the same. Both groups have learned that they can have successful academic careers without caring about any of the issues they study beyond what it takes to get good grades. In the process of leaving their convictions behind, students look for more immediate sources of gratification, such as parties, concerts, the latest music, movies or sports. They can talk about all these topics anytime with anyone and not fear being branded a misfit or worse, which happens whenever they demonstrate traditional views about a topic of cultural, political or economic substance.
Because “success” encourages repetition, after they graduate these acculturated students easily succumb to the same patterns of behavior. Don’t engage the culture. Don’t state your values if they are traditional or conservative. And whatever you do, don’t do or say things that are patriotic. Go along, get along.
Where there is no passion, there is no curiosity, for curiosity requires a certain inner motivation. To learn what is going on in the world, how events play out on the world stage and how they might affect your life, you must first care about these things.
Caring is also related to embarrassment. Remarkably, the interviewees who were stumped by simple questions weren’t the least bit embarrassed by their ignorance. Ask me about the reproduction cycles of kookaburras and I won’t be embarrassed by not knowing anything because I couldn’t care less about kookaburras’ mating habits.
The sad truth about too many Americans today is that they couldn’t care less about what’s going in our country and the world. And we’re all paying the price.
——————
Dick Lyles is a U.S. Navy veteran, author and co-author of more than 10 books, management and leadership expert, popular radio host of The Catholic Business Hour, CEO of Origin Entertainment in Hollywood and founder of Leadership Legacies. Read a more robust bio here.
We encourage feedback and comments. You must register to comment.