Posted by
Doc Stephens on Sunday, June 14, 2009 1:07:00 PM
Keeping our sanity when flooded with sound bites, headlines, twitters, and news capsules requires perspective. The challenge seems greater because the sources of this torrent intentionally exaggerate and purposefully distort just to gain our attention. They are competing for audience and the revenue thus derived. We just want to understand our world.
So, how do we keep our perspective, and our sanity, when so much of the information about our world comes to us filtered through these imperfect sources? How do we counter this maelstrom of misinformation? This deluge of drivel profoundly influences each of us and often causes us to draw false conclusions and to make bad decisions that have serious consequences for our families, our communities, and indeed, for the entire world.
Even the labels associated with contemporary issues evolve and devolve into political correctness and special interest persuasion. Every important news story or headline that lingers for more than a day gets a tag that draws vivid associations and fertile assumptions. These tags create the meme that spreads often like a malicious virus forever infecting our minds with a false reality. Consider the following subjects.
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Global Warming/Climate Change
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Bird Flu/Swine Flu Pandemics
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A Nation at Risk/Failing Schools
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The Struggle for Civil Rights
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Bush’s Katrina
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Health Care Reform/Government Option/Public Option
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The War on Terrorism
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Freedom of Choice/Abortion Rights/Right to Life/Anti-Abortion/Pro-Life
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Evolution/Creationism/Intelligent Design
Each of these issues conjures a complex set of notions and emotions related to our experiences and the information and attitudes we’ve encountered and remembered recently and through the years. Allow me to briefly analyze one of these subjects.
Try this experiment. Ask friends if our public schools are rotten. Chances are they will answer, yes! Ask them how they know and they’ll tell you about the high dropout rates, declining SAT scores, violence in the schools, drugs, incompetent teachers, and any number of other ways they know that public schools are rotten. So, case closed. Our public schools are rotten.
Where did we get these ideas about our public schools? Mostly, they derive from media reports but often from politicians, talking heads, as well as from various friends and family members—it has become the unquestioned truth that virtually everyone accepts. Few of us have ever studied the public schools and made the effort to determine whether the dropout rates have increased or if SAT scores have actually declined, to select just two of the arguments. We share anecdotes from the experiences of our own children and from our memories of being in school. If we already have a notion that schools are rotten, then we tend to assume greater credence in those anecdotes that reinforce our belief. In reality, none of these memes is correct.
More Americans have high school diplomas than ever before and a higher percentage of adults have high school diplomas than ever before. Don’t believe me? Go to the U.S. Census Bureau and check it out for yourself. In just one century, the percentage of adult Americans with high school diplomas has increased from only about 10 percent in 1909 to almost 90 percent in 2009, and it has never been higher than now.
Have SAT scores declined? Average scores declined in the 1970's and early 80’s because of efforts to encourage college education for more people and also because of increasing access to higher education. More people were taking the SAT. When you compare the mean scores of the populations taking the test in 1965 and 1975 you find a lower mean in the later year, but it was a very different population that was taking the test. If you compare the mean SAT scores of the genders and the different racial and ethnic groups in 1965 and 1975 you find that all of these subpopulations increased their average SAT scores, but that was never reported. Someone, actually several people, thought it wasn’t newsworthy—if it bleeds, it leads, and if it blasts, it lasts. And the average scores have continued to increase ever since with some very significant gains in certain subpopulations.
Similar explanations exist to refute the other arguments supporting the notion that our schools are rotten. I've selected just two in order to make the case for seeking perspective.
There are articles and books, indeed libraries full of books, about this subject and all of the others in the list. The point—it is very difficult to keep our perspective when what we hear or read is only a very small part of a larger story about which we have little knowledge and limited experience. How do we keep our perspective when we are deluged with distortions and exaggerations?