Amateur hour: The need for political education

by: Thurman Hart

Sun Feb 14, 2010 at 12:53:20 PM EST

As a person who teaches political science, I understand that I probably have an overblown sense of importance about my field of expertise.  After all, if I won the lottery, I'd just keep throwing money into various studies and dream programs of study until I was broke again.  But I want to make a case here for the very real need for a basic familiarity with the reality of our political system, its design, and the foundation of it.

The immediate impetus for this came from this quote from a local tea partier:

"A progressive believes government knows what's best for people. Our government believes in government from top down. Conservatives, our founders, believed in government from people up. It's something we slowly have to go back to. This is not going to happen overnight. We have to awaken to the fact that both parties have done us wrong. Bush took us there on a steam train. Obama's taking us there on a rocket ship."

I emphasized that third sentence because it reveals a whole world of ignorance about everything I want to talk about.  First, our country was founded by wild-eyed radicals, not conservatives.  Second, they were not a uniform group of thinkers (some delegates even boycotted the Constitutional Convention).  Third, while they trusted the common man to run his own affairs, they did not trust the common man to run the government.  They were, first and foremost, elitists, confident in their ability to reshape the world to their will.

A recent NPR news report estimated that upwards of 90% of all tea party participants have never been involved in any political activity before.  While I think it's great that they are finally getting involved, this means that they have never tried to work the system before declaring the system doesn't work.  Now, I'm not going to pretend that the system always works the way we want it to, but if the tea party folks really worked their local political establishment, I can't help but believe they'd be less dissatisfied and better able to effect change.

The same goes for the Progressive Movement, though we aren't having for-profit rallies (perhaps we should, though - but we do have such things as Netroots Nations).  It's a life-long education, understanding how things are designed, and how they really work.  But if you don't know what you're trying to change, how can you change it?

In elementary school, I had to take New Mexico history in fifth grade, Texas history in sixth grade, and a state civics class in high school.  A lot of it was boring and a lot of it was vastly over-simplified.  But it was a start.  And, in my opinion, a "fair and efficient system of education" has to include an education about how and why the government works as it does, at the local, state, and federal levels.