For educators, ignorance is the enemy

Today's weekly blog from David French, columnist for The Atlantic, begins with this observation: he asked his neighbor, a Trump voter in Tennessee who is one of the kindest people he has ever met, about what he thought of Trump’s lies. “What do you mean?” he responded, in all sincerity. He genuinely did not perceive Trump as dishonest. Even now. In 2022.

He made two observations that seem timely, considering last night's prime time Jan. 6 Committee hearing and what we might expect to result from the story being shared so publicly.

The key observation is that many Republicans simply have never heard of many of Trump's worst excesses and transgressions. Many only watch right wing TV and listen to right wing radio (along with the closed societies social media have produced) and they honestly have never seen or heard much about anything except how horrible Democrats are.

The old saying, "Garbage in, garbage out," that computer programmers repeat seems to apply to our "media silo" culture. If many of our Republican neighbors never watch CBS news or even CNN, and only see Facebook posts from radical crackpots (and Russian bots), we have to think of them more as merely ignorant than actively evil.

I'm sure there's some percentage of Americans who support Trump precisely because he is a jerk who trolls people and institutions they hate endlessly. They will vote for him BECAUSE he is a liar and thief.

But I have to assume those people are not the majority of Americans (or we would have to declare our 250-year experiment with democracy over).

There is a famous Isaac Asimov quote: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Asimov was a prolific sci-fi writer and an insightful observer of society, but his quote remains popular today because we are reminded of its truth constantly.

Some ignorance grows from stubborn refusal to widen research and sources. Most Republicans will never go beyond that. After all, they have chosen their tribe and other voices are quickly branded as dishonest and corrupt. Dems are equally suspect.

But there must be some who are ignorant mostly through their default: "I only watch Fox News because that's what I have been doing for many years. The news is the news, isn't it?"

And may people have another default: if it's on TV or in a paper or magazine or on a website or social media post, there must be some truth to it. If you only consume one section of what the wider media offers, you have not done your research.

But most people don't have the energy, time, or inclination to go beyond initial research -- sort of like stopping with Wikipedia as your source, putting everything into one resource.

The summer four-week session wraps up Sunday night and the final reports required of my CSU students require them to examine issues or initiatives or problems with at least two defensible positions. They can certainly choose one option over another, but they must demonstrate that they at least understand the "other."

In my own media consumption, I can't stand to watch Fox News, preferring to maintain a healthy blood pressure level. I have gotten off Twitter to avoid the worst of the Internet cesspool. 

I assume some well-meaning Republicans have the same sort of revulsion to CBS or ABC. They didn't flip to any mainstream channels last night to learn about what the Jan. 6 Committee was reporting out.

Fox News just ignored it all. Had they shown the hearing, viewers would likely have been surprised and started asking questions about all these lies and plots that a Republican congressperson clearly laid out.

Questions can lead to change. We can't have that.