As a professional political scientist (what exactly does that mean, anyway?), I am often asked my thoughts on current events to which I immediately respond that being a political scientist doesn’t mean that I actually have an opinion on specific current events. The fact of the matter is that I studied political science for the “science” inherent in political science. I don’t care about specific political events; I care about the nature of political science itself. While some people care about the horse racing aspects of politics, I care about why and how people think about the way political events take place. I like looking at 1855 and trying to see how things have changed so that if the same events happen tomorrow, how would people think and act on those events today.
But yes, I do care about specific events that are happening today. I have an opinion on whether or not we should be sending non-citizens back to native countries from where they came. Or should we be deporting people to countries they’ve never visited ever in their past. How can you not have opinions about such things?
Part of me is bothered by the lack of concern that most people have about political issues. Or about the lack of knowledge young people have about practically any political issue. Do you know that most people in the United States can’t figure out how to find Canada on a map? Even worse, I suspect the majority of Americans can’t find the United States on a map either. We like to think that’s not possible, but make the challenge (and take away their smart phones) and they will generally fail in large numbers.
Americans these days are pretty stupid when it comes to geography, history and political science. Yet, they’ll stare you down and say that they know far more than they really do. The problem is they carry around an encyclopedia of knowledge in their hands but take away their wifi, and they know very little. They’ve become a civilization of young people who rely on immediate access to fill in their true lack of knowledge.
I remember teaching a class a year or so ago where I mentioned the Great Emu War (one of my favorite topics) and told a whole story about it in class. The students were laughing and then one student spoke up: “He’s not lying. This is true.” He had just looked up the content of my lecture on the Internet, veryifying that I wasn’t making this up. That sort of summed up my whole thought on the problem we have with youth knowledge today. They know nothing. they look up everything.
This bothers me greatly because the idea of knowledge is that it increases from one generation to the next. As we pass off the baton to the next generation of learners, we should be experiencing new knowledge and new ideas from a younger population. But we don’t seem to be doing that any more. I’m afraid the next generation is learning nothing. And I blame my generation.
You see, it was my generation that created the computer. I was there on the precipice. I coded software in the beginning of the computer generation, and I could see how this information we created was going to lead us into new possibilities. I remember creating web sites for people for their new and old businesses. I remember a client who asked me if I could design a shopping cart for her, and I said I would for the cheap price of her buying me two books that I would use to learn how to make one. The books were on PHP, and I have to say that it was a great language to learn as I used it quite a few times.
Anyway, I started this post a few weeks ago on this blog and kind of forgot where I was going with it (a hint: Never start a post a week ago and forget to finish it up that same day), so let’s just say (after a quick look at the title I made for this post) that politics are weird. Really weird cause maybe one day that might lead to building a shopping cart for a book company. And no one wants to do that.