IP: Interesting article on American ignorance of world affairs

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 00:46:42 -0500
> From: Steve Cohen <stevecoh1 () home com>
>
> http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/09/27/stupidity/index.html
>
> Eric Ransdell, a foreign correspondent for nine years in Africa and Asia 
> and currently a documentary filmmaker living in Shanghai, China, blames 
> the American education system for producing know-nothing citizens, people 
> who in turn are unlikely to protest the decline in news coverage of 
> foreign affairs. Recent surveys by such institutions as Harvard and the 
> University of Maryland show that reporting on world events has 
> dramatically shrunk in both the print and broadcast news media.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "For decades we've been reading about how American schoolchildren can't 
> find Mexico or Canada on a map, and yet nothing seems to change," says 
> Ransdell. "These people who don't know the difference between Switzerland 
> and Swaziland then become the main consumers of news. And in poll after 
> poll they tell us that they want less foreign news and more of what I call 
> 'selfish journalism' -- which stocks to buy, sex and beauty tips, 10 steps 
> to a healthier colon and so on. It becomes this horrible feedback loop 
> where people are sent out of our schools in a state of complete ignorance 
> of the rest of the world and then, maybe because they're embarrassed, 
> clamor for even less information on something they know almost nothing about."



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