Who Thinks The Majority Of College Students Have Even One Grain Of Political Sense ?

Question

Selling Your Vote ?
The dumbing-down of America's youth is in full swing . A poll of NYU students indicates the utter nonsense and irresponsibility of the majority of our youth . Misguided , ill-informed and irresponsible . Not entirely the kids fault though . As you will see in the attached news story , even one of their teachers is nuts enough to think that selling one's vote is somehow an 'admirable' quality . Read this poll and then I'd appreciate your comments .

According to the report, a survey of 3,000 students conducted by an NYU undergraduate journalism class found that an overwhelming majority of those polled said their right to vote could be for sale; in addition to the 66 percent who said they'd trade their vote for a free year of college, 20 percent said they'd exchange their vote for an Ipod Touch. Half of the students polled said they'd forfeit their right to vote forever for $1 million.

Dalton Conley, chairman of NYU's sociology department, told Politico.com that the results are actually encouraging. The high price tag most students put on their vote showed that they actually think the right to vote is very valuable and important.

Answer 1

Have you never been to College?

The are kids, most are not even old enough to drink and most do not have a political sense when they first are in College?

1 million dollars is a lot of money to a College kid that doesn't have much in the first place.

Money affects people that don't always have it. Welcome to the real world.

Answer 2

The entire problem with education began with the Carter Administration. He created the Federal Department of Education. If you notice, the Constitution does not address the issue of education. That is because they assumed that education was the responsibility of the Several States and the People respectively.

The vile bureaucrats in Washington usurp the Constitution which forbids the Federal Government to involve itself in anything not specified. They do this through bribery and coersion. Here is an example.

The Feds start a program where they give grant money to school districts to provide, say, a free lunch program for school kids. Soon, the school districts are deeply involved in providing this service and many constituents come to rely on it. Then the Feds start to attach a few strings to the money.

You must agree to this new teaching method or loose your school lunch grant. When you teach morality you will stress recycling and being a good steward of the environment. You will no longer teach American History or Geography. You will, instead, teach only Social Studies.

You must agree to teach in the Spanish language for those students that do not speak English. You will impose this Liberal experimental method or that Liberal experimental method on your faculty and students.

Why? Well, you see, many of the Bureaucrats who do this have an agenda. That agenda is beyond Liberal. It is clearly Socialist. Just as our founders clearly expressed many times, America requires a well educated and well informed populace if it wishes to remain free, the Communist and Socialist proponents extole the virtues of keeping the masses largely uninformed. The dumber the better. The ignorant are much easier to indoctrinate; easier to control.

In the former Soviet Union and during the Chinese revolution, they gathered up and killed the intellectuals, the religious leaders and the teachers. They then substituted their views for the truth.

The same is slowly and inexoribley occurring in America. Why do you think the bureaucrats so resist home schooling or school choice? Where do you think all the vitriol dumped on religion comes from? Heck, we used to start every school day with a prayer up until the 1960's.

If you ask me Senator Joseph McCarthy was right. The Communists were infiltrating our governement.


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Answer 3

Higher Education * Create the American Opportunity Tax Credit: Obama will make college affordable for all Americans by creating a new American Opportunity Tax Credit. This universal and fully refundable credit will ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans, and will cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university and make community college tuition completely free for most students. Obama will also ensure that the tax credit is available to families at the time of enrollment by using prior year's tax data to deliver the credit when tuition is due. * Simplify the Application Process for Financial Aid: Obama will streamline the financial aid process by eliminating the current federal financial aid application and enabling families to apply simply by checking a box on their tax form, authorizing their tax information to be used, and eliminating the need for a separate application. Maybe you should get an education, then you would learn that he does have a plan.

Answer 4

I am baffled at the poll results. At what price then would one sell his freedom? Since I became an American citizen and began instructing students at the high school level over 8 years ago, I was amazed at their lack of social skills and political knowledge. Further troubling is the preaching (not teaching) of anti-establishment rhetoric by instructors. They appear to spend more time forwarding personal agendas and less time on providing essential information. The same can be said for the college students I now work with as a career counsellor. Most could not tell you who the vice president is or name the capitals of five states! In europe, the middle east and most of the orient english is spoken frequently as a second language, nearly all students at the 10th grade level can name the top five elected officials of the U.S., all of our previous presidents and they understand our economic system. This is a sad state of affairs. It seems most college level students here are only focused on making the quick top dollar with little regard for the future. What of personal growth and commitment? Although some may argue that this is to be expected, I must warn that professionals from all over the world will be displacing Americans at an accelerated rate in coming years.

Answer 5

Not me.

"According to the report, a survey of 3,000 students conducted by an NYU undergraduate journalism class found that an overwhelming majority of those polled said their right to vote could be for sale; in addition to the 66 percent who said they'd trade their vote for a free year of college, 20 percent said they'd exchange their vote for an Ipod Touch. Half of the students polled said they'd forfeit their right to vote forever for $1 million."

Our politicans do that every day when they sell out the American people to the lobbists of special interest groups.

I'll wait to see your rant about that.

Answer 6

Judging by the results of the poll, many of the questions and answers on this forum, and the fact that pop culture is much more important to them than anything else in their lives, one would naturally question whether or not they have any sense. However, it is not entirely their fault. If they are in college that means that they have completed thirteen years of schooling, mostly in government run schools controlled by the NEA, a decidedly leftist organization which spends more time and money lobbying for teachers and adminstrators benefits than they do insuring that children receive a quality education. Rather than teaching the basic subjects necessary to successfully compete in the modern (and global) world, the schools concentrate on social engineering, usurping the role of the parents. With political correctness the norm, those values once successfully taught at home and in the church are denigrated and ridiculed at every opportunity, to the point of ridiculousness. When the students complete secondary school they are on an intellectual level of some eighth grade students in other countries, unable to speak their own language properly, with negligible math skills, but possessing very high, but unwarranted, self-esteem. Discipline problems abound in middle school and high schools around the country. So having been taught no traditional values and fully indoctrinated in leftist philosophy, it is no wonder that so many of them are willing to sell one of their most precious rights in a free society. The number one crisis in the US is not health care, it is the deplorable state of our public (government) education system, which has been in decline for the last 45 years. Until we adopt some sort of equitable voucher and tax incentive system for education and let the marketplace weed out the unqualified teachers, and until pop culture takes a back seat to growing up equipped to be in the adult world, our youth will continue to be mired in mediocrity without even being aware of it.

Answer 7

The question is how many Americans actually have political sense? College is just a microcosm of the greater world. College students tend to be ideological and a bit enamored of their own self perceived brilliance. This is just a product of youthful exuberance and usually rights itself with time. However, supposed intelligent thinking adults have no such excuse and if you polled the same number in our society at random I suspect the results would be much the same.

Answer 8

I don't find an attachment, but you are using limited source information.

As an educator at the College level, I don't find students less interested in politics or voting than I have over the past 20 years or so. I do find they think more not only about right now, but about the world in which they and their kids will live.

Most of my students are upset by the war and also Bush's secretive style of running his administartion. They rate him as not too smart and corrupt.


I find their level of interest promising.

They are more liberal than the 80's and 90's students. They are more like my generation of students (70's) and we affected a lot of change.

They DO come to college less prepared in the Social Sciences than I would like, but they catch up.

I attribute this to the fact that the majority of High School social Science teachers are what I call 'History Coaches'.
So they get less useful info than from someone more dedicated to the subject matter.

As for selling their vote, they do seem to have a pretty high price and I expect most of them wouldn't really do that in the end.

As for the 20% IPod people, they are always out there, in every generation. I see rather overwhelming support for the more moderate candidates in this race, like Senator Clinton and Rudy Guliani. The support with my students for those two is about 56% to 44% for the Senator, when those two are the choices. Obama gets quite a lot when he is added.

The support for the more conservative candidates is very low.

McCain does the best here but it is still very low.

When asked about the most honest modern president they site Carter and Ford about equally. When askedabout the most effective President they rate Clinton first and Reagan second 59%-41%.

I expect Reagan is rolling over in his grave at what has happened to his party.



Least effective George W. then his father, then Carter.

Most students rate the war ending as the most important issue because of the global instability it has caused. (this among my upper division students). Universal healthcare is most important to the others and a close second for the upper division. Environment and energy are right there as well for all students.

Answer 9

Even political science students can be lacking in political sense tragically. The dumbing down on important things like history, foreign relations. government organization all show why the voters of today are putting in candidates who are not qualified.

Answer 10

Where I live only 25% of the people bother to vote anyway, I guess the other 75% feel they might as well get something out of it, huh?

Answer 11

1. your talking about students in NY
2. I looked at the polls already and those that said they'll sell it don't vote already. so it doesn't make an ounce of diffrence.
3. College students do have political sense, but college students care more about money since its has more usefulness to ppl that already don't vote.