Dunce Cap Nation

Occasionally, I ask my students if they know who their Congressperson is. At such times, typically, one student will raise his or her hand. I'll turn to him or her. I'll say,

"Great! So, who is your Congressperson?"

"Feinstein, I think."

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This morning's Inside Higher Ed reports that

A majority of the public believes that political bias by professors is a serious problem and doubts that tenure promotes quality...More than 58 percent of those polled believe that political bias is a somewhat serious or very serious problem.

There are sharp divisions by party lines (73.3 percent of Republicans view the problem as very serious, while only 6.7 percent of Democrats do), gender (46.8 percent of men view the problem as very serious, compared to 32.1 percent of women) religion (57.9 percent of those who are born again view the problem as very serious, while only 17.6 percent of Jews do), and those who shop at Wal-Mart (56.7 percent of those who shop there weekly believe the problem is very serious, while only 17.6 percent of those who never do think that).

…On the tenure question, divisions were less clear by demographic groups and were more consistent across groups, although Republicans appear to be more dubious of tenure than are Democrats.

…The Zogby poll is not the first to suggest ambivalence of Americans about what goes on in the classroom and about tenure. Last year, a poll commissioned by the American Association of University Professors found such ambivalence, although one of the lead researchers on that poll had several criticisms of the Zogby effort.

Neil Gross, an assistant professor of sociology at Harvard University who worked on the AAUP poll, noted that in its questions on tenure, it started by asking people if they understood tenure, and that only 55 percent had even heard of it. … Given ... that many people haven’t heard of tenure, Gross said he was skeptical of poll results that did not include a definition. (A Zogby spokesman confirmed that no definition was given.)

The AAUP survey ended up with results that were quite similar to Zogby’s on the percentage of the public believing classroom bias is a serious problem. … But Gross said that there was a key difference in that the AAUP asked the public how it viewed a range of potential problems on campus. The public is far more worried about college costs and binge drinking by students than by political bias, the AAUP survey found.

...[Said Gross,] "...[The Zogby pollsters] have simply asked about whether something is a problem, and there is a strong tendency in polls that if you ask people if something is a problem, they say yes,” he said. “The real issue is how big an issue it is compared to other problems.”…. (My emphases throughout.)

Yes, it is important to determine what Americans think cuz this country is a democracy, sort of, and so people's views have a certain importance. Evidently, re higher ed, college costs and binge drinking are on Americans' minds, followed by prof "bias" in the classroom, etc.

But Americans tend to have beliefs that are, well, truth-challenged. According to a recent Newsweek poll (Dunce Cap Nation),

Even today, more than four years into the war in Iraq, as many as four in 10 Americans (41 percent) still believe Saddam Hussein’s regime was directly involved in financing, planning or carrying out the terrorist attacks on 9/11, even though no evidence has surfaced to support a connection. A majority of Americans were similarly unable to pick Saudi Arabia in a multiple-choice question about the country where most of the 9/11 hijackers were born. Just 43 percent got it right—and a full 20 percent thought most came from Iraq.