by David Hoffman
There's a national election coming up, and the polls show it's going to be close. I imagine nearly everyone paying attention has had the fantasy, at some point, of being able to supply other voters with additional general civic knowledge on which to base their judgments. It's not merely our imagining that with more information and wisdom people would leap to our side and sweep our candidates to victory (or believing, arrogantly, that we have cornered the market on insight and good judgment). It's more our hoping that widespread political education might shift the incentives facing candidates, so that instead of being tempted to manipulate and drive us apart through oversimplifications and distortions, they would feel compelled to embrace facts, frame choices honestly, and even seek common ground in order to win our votes.
What kinds of political education would accomplish this? I'm interested in your thoughts. Here are my top three wishes:
There's a national election coming up, and the polls show it's going to be close. I imagine nearly everyone paying attention has had the fantasy, at some point, of being able to supply other voters with additional general civic knowledge on which to base their judgments. It's not merely our imagining that with more information and wisdom people would leap to our side and sweep our candidates to victory (or believing, arrogantly, that we have cornered the market on insight and good judgment). It's more our hoping that widespread political education might shift the incentives facing candidates, so that instead of being tempted to manipulate and drive us apart through oversimplifications and distortions, they would feel compelled to embrace facts, frame choices honestly, and even seek common ground in order to win our votes.
What kinds of political education would accomplish this? I'm interested in your thoughts. Here are my top three wishes:
- I wish every voter could have the experience of truly getting to know people who are superficially different from themselves along as many dimensions as possible (including race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, gender identity, geographic origin, citizenship status, religion, political ideology and life experience). I want everyone who votes to understand the impact of alternative choices through many people's eyes.
- I wish every voter could have the experience of working successfully with others to solve a serious community problem or build an important new resource. That would position them to anticipate the outcome of alternative courses of action, and to evaluate candidates' competing claims.
- I wish every voter could have a thorough education in climate science and natural resource economics, so they could trace the impact of our consumption and pollution on long-term weather patterns, sea levels, ecosystems, the ice caps, the ozone layer, and our water supply. Voters with that knowledge could anticipate consequences of different energy policies, and evaluate candidates based in part on how their actions would contribute to the sustainability of planetary resources on which all our lives and our well-being depend.
Co-Create UMBC is a blog for and about UMBC, written by David Hoffman and Craig Berger from the Office of Student Life. Join the Co-Create UMBC group on MyUMBC. Like Co-Create UMBC on Facebook. And follow David and Craig on Twitter.
