***********************
From the Chronicle of Higher Education, Friday,April 11, 2008, Volume 54, Issue 31, p. A 37. Seehttp://chronicle.com/free/v54/i31/31a03701.htm
***********************
COMMENTARYSo Much for the Information AgeToday's college students have tuned out the world, and it's partly our faultBy Ted GupI teach a seminar called "Secrecy: ForbiddenKnowledge." I recently asked my class of 16freshmen and sophomores, many of whom hadgraduated in the top 10 percent of theirhigh-school classes and had dazzling SAT scores,how many had heard the word "rendition."Not one hand went up.This is after four years of the word appearing onthe front pages of the nation's newspapers, onnetwork and cable news, and online. This is afteryears of highly publicized lawsuits,Congressional inquiries, and internationalcontroversy and condemnation. This is after therelease of a Hollywood film of that title,starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, and ReeseWitherspoon.I was dumbstruck. Finally one hand went up, andthe student sheepishly asked if rendition hadanything to do with a version of a movie or aplay.I nodded charitably, then attempted to define theword in its more public context. I describedspecific accounts of U.S. abductions of foreigncitizens, of the likely treatment accorded suchprisoners when placed in the hands of countrieslike Syria and Egypt, of the months and years ofdetention. I spoke of the lack of formal charges,of some prisoners' eventual release and how theirsubsequent lawsuits against the U.S. governmentwere stymied in the name of national security andsecrecy.The students were visibly disturbed. Theyexpressed astonishment, then revulsion. Theyasked how such practices could go on.I told them to look around the room at oneanother's faces; they were seated next to theanswer. I suggested that they were, in part, thereason that rendition, waterboarding, Guantánamodetention, warrantless searches and intercepts,and a host of other such practices have not beenmore roundly discredited. I admit it was harsh.That instance was no aberration. In recent yearsI have administered a dumbed-down quiz on currentevents and history early in each semester to geta sense of what my students know and don't know.Initially I worried that its simplicity wouldinsult them, but my fears were unfounded. Theresults have been, well, horrifying.Nearly half of a recent class could not name asingle country that bordered Israel. In anintroductory journalism class, 11 of 18 studentscould not name what country Kabul was in,although we have been at war there for half adecade. Last fall only one in 21 students couldname the U.S. secretary of defense. Given a listof four countries - China, Cuba, India, and Japan- not one of those same 21 students couldidentify India and Japan as democracies. Theirgrasp of history was little better. The questionof when the Civil War was fought invited an arrayof responses - half a dozen were off by a decadeor more. Some students thought that Islam was theprincipal religion of South America, that Roe v.Wade was about slavery, that 50 justices sit onthe U.S. Supreme Court, that the atom bomb wasdropped on Hiroshima in 1975. You get thepicture, and it isn't pretty.As a journalist, professor, and citizen, I findit profoundly discouraging to encounter suchignorance of critical issues. But it would beboth unfair and inaccurate to hold those youngpeople accountable for the moral and legal morasswe now find ourselves in as a nation. They areearnest, readily educable, and, when informed,impassioned.I make it clear to my students that it is notonly their right but their duty to arrive attheir own conclusions. They are free to defendrendition, waterboarding, or any other aspect ofAmerica's post-9/11 armamentarium. But Ichallenge their right to tune out the world, andI question any system or society that can producesuch students and call them educated. I amconcerned for the nation when a cohort ofstudents so talented and bright is oblivious toall such matters. If they are failing us, it isbecause we have failed them.Still, it is hard to reconcile the students' lackof knowledge with the notion that they are a partof the celebrated information age, creatures ofthe Internet who arguably have at their disposalmore information than all the precedinggenerations combined. Despite their BlackBerrys,cellphones, and Wi-Fi, they are, in their ownway, as isolated as the remote tribes of NewGuinea. They disprove the notion that technologyfosters engagement, that connectivity andcommunity are synonymous. I despair to think thatthis is the generation brought up under thebanner of "No Child Left Behind." What I see isthe specter of an entire generation left behindand left out.It is not easy to explain how we got into thissad state, or to separate symptoms from causes.Newspaper readership is in steep decline. Mystudents simply do not read newspapers, online orotherwise, and many grew up in households thatdid not subscribe to a paper. Those who tune into television "news" are subjected to a barrageof opinions from talking heads like CNN'sdemagogic Lou Dobbs and MSNBC's Chris Matthewsand Fox's Bill O'Reilly and his dizzying "No SpinZone." In today's journalistic world, opiniontrumps fact (the former being cheaper toproduce), and rank partisanship and virulentculture wars make the middle grounduninhabitable. Small wonder, then, that mystudents shrink from it.Then, too, there is the explosion of citizenjournalism. An army of average Joes, equippedwith cellphones, laptops, and video cameras, hascommandeered our news media. The mantra of "Wewant to hear from you!" is all the rage, from CNNto NPR; but, although invigorating anddemocratizing, it has failed to supplant theprovision of essential facts, generating moreheat than light. Many of my students can reporton the latest travails of celebrities or thesexual follies of politicos, and can be forgivenfor thinking that such matters dominate the news- they do. Even those students whose home pagesopen onto news sites have tailored them toparochial interests - sports, entertainment,weather - that are a pale substitute for thescope and sweep of a good front page or the PBSNewsHour With Jim Lehrer (which many studentsseem ready to pickle in formaldehyde).Civics is decidedly out of fashion in thehigh-school classroom, a quaint throwbacksuperseded by courses in technology. As teachersscramble to "teach to the test," civics isincreasingly relegated to after-school clubs andgeeky graduation prizes. Somehow my studentssailed through high-school courses in governmentand social studies without acquiring the habit ofkeeping abreast of national and internationalevents. What little they know of such mattersthey have absorbed through popular culture - songlyrics, parody, and comedy. The Daily Show WithJon Stewart is as close as many dare get toactual news.Yes, the post-9/11 world is a scary place, andplenty of diversions can absorb young people'sattention and energies, as well as distract themfrom the anxieties of preparing for a career inan increasingly uncertain economy. But thatrespite comes at a cost.As a journalist, I have spent my career promotingtransparency and accountability. But myexperiences in the classroom humble and chastenme. They remind me that challenges to secrecy andopacity are moot if society does not avail itselfof information that is readily accessible.Indeed, our very failure to digest the accessiblehelps to create an environment in which secrecycan run rampant.It is time to once again make current events anessential part of the curriculum. Families andschools must instill in students the habit offollowing what is happening in the world. Aglobal economy will have little use for a countrywhose people are so self-absorbed that they knownothing of their own nation's present or past,much less the world's. There is a fundamentaldifference between shouldering the rights andresponsibilities that come with citizenship -engagement, participation, debate - and merelyinhabiting the land.As a nation, we spend an inordinate amount oftime fretting about illegal immigration andpainfully little on what it means to be acitizen, beyond the legal status conferred byaccident of birth or public processing. We aretoo busy building a wall around us to notice thatwe are shutting ourselves in. Intent on exportingdemocracy - spending blood and billions inpursuit of it abroad - we have shown a decidedlack of interest in exercising or promotingdemocracy at home.The noted American scholar Robert M. Hutchinssaid, decades ago: "The object of the educationalsystem, taken as a whole, is not to produce handsfor industry or to teach the young how to make aliving. It is to produce responsible citizens."He warned that "the death of a democracy is notlikely to be an assassination from ambush. Itwill be a slow extinction from apathy,indifference, and undernourishment." I fear hewas right.I tell the students in my secrecy class that theyare required to attend. After all, we count onone another; without student participation, itjust doesn't work. The same might be said ofdemocracy. Attendance is mandatory.
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Ted Gup is a professor of journalism at CaseWestern Reserve University and author of Nationof Secrets: The Threat to Democracy and theAmerican Way of Life (Doubleday, 2007).**********************************
From the Chronicle of Higher Education, Friday,April 11, 2008, Volume 54, Issue 31, p. A 37. Seehttp://chronicle.com/free/v54/i31/31a03701.htm
***********************
COMMENTARYSo Much for the Information AgeToday's college students have tuned out the world, and it's partly our faultBy Ted GupI teach a seminar called "Secrecy: ForbiddenKnowledge." I recently asked my class of 16freshmen and sophomores, many of whom hadgraduated in the top 10 percent of theirhigh-school classes and had dazzling SAT scores,how many had heard the word "rendition."Not one hand went up.This is after four years of the word appearing onthe front pages of the nation's newspapers, onnetwork and cable news, and online. This is afteryears of highly publicized lawsuits,Congressional inquiries, and internationalcontroversy and condemnation. This is after therelease of a Hollywood film of that title,starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, and ReeseWitherspoon.I was dumbstruck. Finally one hand went up, andthe student sheepishly asked if rendition hadanything to do with a version of a movie or aplay.I nodded charitably, then attempted to define theword in its more public context. I describedspecific accounts of U.S. abductions of foreigncitizens, of the likely treatment accorded suchprisoners when placed in the hands of countrieslike Syria and Egypt, of the months and years ofdetention. I spoke of the lack of formal charges,of some prisoners' eventual release and how theirsubsequent lawsuits against the U.S. governmentwere stymied in the name of national security andsecrecy.The students were visibly disturbed. Theyexpressed astonishment, then revulsion. Theyasked how such practices could go on.I told them to look around the room at oneanother's faces; they were seated next to theanswer. I suggested that they were, in part, thereason that rendition, waterboarding, Guantánamodetention, warrantless searches and intercepts,and a host of other such practices have not beenmore roundly discredited. I admit it was harsh.That instance was no aberration. In recent yearsI have administered a dumbed-down quiz on currentevents and history early in each semester to geta sense of what my students know and don't know.Initially I worried that its simplicity wouldinsult them, but my fears were unfounded. Theresults have been, well, horrifying.Nearly half of a recent class could not name asingle country that bordered Israel. In anintroductory journalism class, 11 of 18 studentscould not name what country Kabul was in,although we have been at war there for half adecade. Last fall only one in 21 students couldname the U.S. secretary of defense. Given a listof four countries - China, Cuba, India, and Japan- not one of those same 21 students couldidentify India and Japan as democracies. Theirgrasp of history was little better. The questionof when the Civil War was fought invited an arrayof responses - half a dozen were off by a decadeor more. Some students thought that Islam was theprincipal religion of South America, that Roe v.Wade was about slavery, that 50 justices sit onthe U.S. Supreme Court, that the atom bomb wasdropped on Hiroshima in 1975. You get thepicture, and it isn't pretty.As a journalist, professor, and citizen, I findit profoundly discouraging to encounter suchignorance of critical issues. But it would beboth unfair and inaccurate to hold those youngpeople accountable for the moral and legal morasswe now find ourselves in as a nation. They areearnest, readily educable, and, when informed,impassioned.I make it clear to my students that it is notonly their right but their duty to arrive attheir own conclusions. They are free to defendrendition, waterboarding, or any other aspect ofAmerica's post-9/11 armamentarium. But Ichallenge their right to tune out the world, andI question any system or society that can producesuch students and call them educated. I amconcerned for the nation when a cohort ofstudents so talented and bright is oblivious toall such matters. If they are failing us, it isbecause we have failed them.Still, it is hard to reconcile the students' lackof knowledge with the notion that they are a partof the celebrated information age, creatures ofthe Internet who arguably have at their disposalmore information than all the precedinggenerations combined. Despite their BlackBerrys,cellphones, and Wi-Fi, they are, in their ownway, as isolated as the remote tribes of NewGuinea. They disprove the notion that technologyfosters engagement, that connectivity andcommunity are synonymous. I despair to think thatthis is the generation brought up under thebanner of "No Child Left Behind." What I see isthe specter of an entire generation left behindand left out.It is not easy to explain how we got into thissad state, or to separate symptoms from causes.Newspaper readership is in steep decline. Mystudents simply do not read newspapers, online orotherwise, and many grew up in households thatdid not subscribe to a paper. Those who tune into television "news" are subjected to a barrageof opinions from talking heads like CNN'sdemagogic Lou Dobbs and MSNBC's Chris Matthewsand Fox's Bill O'Reilly and his dizzying "No SpinZone." In today's journalistic world, opiniontrumps fact (the former being cheaper toproduce), and rank partisanship and virulentculture wars make the middle grounduninhabitable. Small wonder, then, that mystudents shrink from it.Then, too, there is the explosion of citizenjournalism. An army of average Joes, equippedwith cellphones, laptops, and video cameras, hascommandeered our news media. The mantra of "Wewant to hear from you!" is all the rage, from CNNto NPR; but, although invigorating anddemocratizing, it has failed to supplant theprovision of essential facts, generating moreheat than light. Many of my students can reporton the latest travails of celebrities or thesexual follies of politicos, and can be forgivenfor thinking that such matters dominate the news- they do. Even those students whose home pagesopen onto news sites have tailored them toparochial interests - sports, entertainment,weather - that are a pale substitute for thescope and sweep of a good front page or the PBSNewsHour With Jim Lehrer (which many studentsseem ready to pickle in formaldehyde).Civics is decidedly out of fashion in thehigh-school classroom, a quaint throwbacksuperseded by courses in technology. As teachersscramble to "teach to the test," civics isincreasingly relegated to after-school clubs andgeeky graduation prizes. Somehow my studentssailed through high-school courses in governmentand social studies without acquiring the habit ofkeeping abreast of national and internationalevents. What little they know of such mattersthey have absorbed through popular culture - songlyrics, parody, and comedy. The Daily Show WithJon Stewart is as close as many dare get toactual news.Yes, the post-9/11 world is a scary place, andplenty of diversions can absorb young people'sattention and energies, as well as distract themfrom the anxieties of preparing for a career inan increasingly uncertain economy. But thatrespite comes at a cost.As a journalist, I have spent my career promotingtransparency and accountability. But myexperiences in the classroom humble and chastenme. They remind me that challenges to secrecy andopacity are moot if society does not avail itselfof information that is readily accessible.Indeed, our very failure to digest the accessiblehelps to create an environment in which secrecycan run rampant.It is time to once again make current events anessential part of the curriculum. Families andschools must instill in students the habit offollowing what is happening in the world. Aglobal economy will have little use for a countrywhose people are so self-absorbed that they knownothing of their own nation's present or past,much less the world's. There is a fundamentaldifference between shouldering the rights andresponsibilities that come with citizenship -engagement, participation, debate - and merelyinhabiting the land.As a nation, we spend an inordinate amount oftime fretting about illegal immigration andpainfully little on what it means to be acitizen, beyond the legal status conferred byaccident of birth or public processing. We aretoo busy building a wall around us to notice thatwe are shutting ourselves in. Intent on exportingdemocracy - spending blood and billions inpursuit of it abroad - we have shown a decidedlack of interest in exercising or promotingdemocracy at home.The noted American scholar Robert M. Hutchinssaid, decades ago: "The object of the educationalsystem, taken as a whole, is not to produce handsfor industry or to teach the young how to make aliving. It is to produce responsible citizens."He warned that "the death of a democracy is notlikely to be an assassination from ambush. Itwill be a slow extinction from apathy,indifference, and undernourishment." I fear hewas right.I tell the students in my secrecy class that theyare required to attend. After all, we count onone another; without student participation, itjust doesn't work. The same might be said ofdemocracy. Attendance is mandatory.
--------------------------
Ted Gup is a professor of journalism at CaseWestern Reserve University and author of Nationof Secrets: The Threat to Democracy and theAmerican Way of Life (Doubleday, 2007).**********************************
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