help with government class?

Question

in reviewing the failure of Americans to know much about politics, identify and discuss three possible causes for the failure
-any suggestions??

Answer 1

1. There is a shift from broader ranging education to mere training in how we are educating our population, and marketers for vocational schools have blurred the distinction between "educuation" and "training." In our regular educational institutions there has to be a response to evolving corporate need in terms of personnel. So we can see that corporations are continually reshaping our institutions of higher learning by virtue of the kinds of activities they fund, etc. They want mostly robots with a few very creative but maleable geniuses.

2. Media is owned and operated by corporations. We used to criticize the Soviet Union for its state run media, but we have corporate run media (and corporate run state!). We are never going to get the truth from this gang of rich folk. We get as much lies and propoganda as the Soviet citizens ever did! And now we are being encouraged to rat each other out for every little thing. We are shown person after person saying how much they like being searched and how safe it makes them feel when everyone I see at the airport is really ticked off and sick of it! The Soviet Union fell but now our culture feels like there is a KGB everywhere. (Who is winning the war on terror? Seems like they changed every single citizen's life. Our proper response would have been to refuse to change our lifestyle one iota. But I digress....

3. Material distraction. We are being kept working long hours despite all increases in productivity. Then when we get off of work, we are tired and want to reward ourselves. So we eat a lot, buy a lot of stuff, play video games and watch TV - anything but think about problems in the world or anything important or serious. If we do switch on the News, we get No. 2 (above). It takes a real effort to be informed these days and it is equally hard to be objective when so much information is communicated with great bias.

Answer 2

Apathy on the part of the voter. Most do not bother to vote. The ones that do do not know who or what they are voting for/on. They do not know their issues they vote for names they recognize or whoever their favorite talking-head or religious leader tells them to.

Lack of education in the schools-Perhaps we could deny anyone the right to drive unless they register to vote.In order to pass the voter/driving test, they would be asked questions as to the political process.

Hatred- Many Americans are so involved in hatred that they do not care about anything else. The newest hatred is against Immigrants. It began when they became scape-goats after 9/11. Even though the Predominantly Saudi-Arabian attackers were in this country legally, we blamed illegal aliens. We also blamed Iraqis. They are another recipient of our recent hatred. They were blamed for the attack on our country even though they had nothing to do with it.

The Iraqis and the Immigrants are just the most recent recipients. In the past it has been African Americans, Japanese, etc, etc, etc,..... The names just change with the times. We take that hatred and will vote for whoever is running for office who seems to hate them as much.

Perhaps if children learned tolerance,acceptance,love and diplomacy in either the home,the school or their church we could fix this aspect of our broken system. Unfortunately, much of the hatred is learned in the home and is passed down from generation to generation so that probably leaves the schools to teach it because many people do not go to church.

That is about the best three reasons we have problems with politics in this country.

Answer 3

Well being fed up with the political system would be one thing in my opinion. # 2 would be that folk are fed up with the politicians. # 3 would be the fact that everyone realizes they cant do a thing about # 1 & # 2.

However, there is a fourth...................All the damned taxes that John Q Public has to pay to our 'political royalty'
If some have the money to visit an escort service, that just means we're paying them too much.

A suggestion: If they dont vote on any given day, they dont get paid. Turn their easy system into peace work as it were.

Answer 4

The biggest one is apathy -- if it doesn't directly inconvenience people in their day-to-day lives, most don't care.

Another is partisan bickering -- too many people spend so much time and energy bashing "the other side" that they have no time or energy left to actually research, understand and discuss the issues.

Answer 5

You could talk about the general apathy that so many people today have for their government and their freedoms.