Ignorance in U.S.

Civic illiteracy abounds

An alarming message from the nonprofit American Council of Trustees and Alumni reveals my stunning level of ignorance when it comes to the extent of national civic illiteracy.

This nonpartisan, privately funded organization recently conducted a nationwide survey that disclosed how deep and wide the river of know-nothingness in governmental understanding runs. That’s thanks in large measure to woefully inadequate civics education at the post-secondary level.

I’ve got to wonder why our young are not being given critical context and accurate historical perspective about our nation’s past.

For instance, ACTA says it found 26 percent of respondents believe Brett Kavanaugh is the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court while 14 percent named the late Antonin Scalia. Fewer than half correctly identified Chief Justice John Roberts.

Eighteen percent identified freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as author of the New Deal, enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.

A whopping 63 present did not even know the term lengths of U.S. senators and representatives.

ACTA’s examination of 1,123 general education programs and analysis of 2019–2020 course catalogs revealed only 18 percent of U.S. colleges and universities require a course in American history or government.

“Colleges have the responsibility to prepare students for a lifetime of informed citizenship. Our annual ‘What Will They Learn?’ report illustrates the steady deterioration of the core curriculum,” said Michael Poliakoff, the organization’s president. “When American history and government courses are removed, you begin to see disheartening survey responses like these, and America’s experiment in self-government begins to slip from our grasp.”

What now?

Speaking of ignorance, since being diagnosed with Type II diabetes in 1997, I’ve run the gamut in balancing my blood sugar from daily injection pens, to losing 75 pounds, to twicedaily 500 mg Metformin tablets.

In recent years, I’ve achieved that by relying only on those pills and exercise.

Now, wouldn’t ya just know (and I’m speaking here particularly to the nearly 15 percent of Arkansans battling the same disease, many using this same prescription drug), researchers at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation say all my exercising might have actually been reducing the benefits of Metformin.

No problem, eh? After all, it is the most prescribed medication globally for those with Type II diabetes, according to a recent story in The New York Times.

So all you paddling in my boat of ignorance, as well as those who’ve been declared pre-diabetic, can consider today’s column aimed at you. It’s a wonder nowadays how any of us trusting folks know what to believe and/or ignore at our peril.

The missing birds

The more years that pass, the happier I am to sit a spell on the porch during the warmer months and quietly watch so many species play and flit through nearby branches and pause to enjoy the feeders and bird baths in the yard.

But something profoundly amiss has been happening quickly in the skies today. When I was a senior at the University of Central Arkansas, the U.S. and Canada were home to 29 percent more birds than exist today.

Science magazine says that translates to 2.9 billion fewer birds from 529 species. That’s according to a study by scientists from seven institutions who compared for the first time bird counts between 1971 and today. Ken Rosenberg, a conservation scientist with Cornell’s Laboratory of Ornithology and American Bird Conservancy who headed the research team, called the staggering loss involving birds of all father nothing short of astounding.

“These bird losses are a strong signal that our human-altered landscapes are losing their ability to support birdlife,” Rosenberg said. “And that is an indicator of a coming collapse of the overall environment.”

The Conservancy has a plan to help restore the bird population by confronting critical threats through conserving 50 million acres and focusing on 50 flagship bird species.

While it’s all but impossible in this era of overstatements and hidden-agenda-inspired information, it’s clear that losing so many birds from hundreds of species since 1970 is symptomatic of something even larger that can’t bode well for us or future generations. If science tells us nature, left to her own devices, strikes a perfect balance of growth and survival, at least one aspect of the equation obviously is wobbling today.

Speculation has everything from natural predators to pollution, pesticides or other factors likely playing a role. Yet while no one can pinpoint a definitive culprit, logic should warn that disturbing events are underway in the environment that don’t appear positive for the future generation of birds and other species.

After all, valued readers, there’s a valid reason humans have used sensitive canaries to warn of potentially deadly dangers in mineshafts.

Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist, was editor of three Arkansas dailies and headed the master’s journalism program at Ohio State University. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.