democracy is a double-edged sword it
places political power in the hands of
the people to be successful however it
needs those people to be well informed
well informed citizens will not be
easily manipulated not easily oppressed
well-informed citizens will guard their
freedoms jealously and when those
citizens get it wrong and they will get
it wrong from time to time they’ll
disagree with one another and this keeps
things from moving too far in the wrong
direction but the inherent tension of a
democracy is the need to place political
power in the hands of people who may or
may not be well informed our founding
fathers the ones who wrote the state and
federal constitutions under which we
live firmly believe that the only
solution was to create public education
systems that prepared people to
participate in democracy today I want to
talk to you about the real dangers our
nation faces when we fail to provide
those educational opportunities and when
we as adults just get lazy in our
everyday lives today civics and critical
literacy are well critical by civics I
mean how government works
most people have next to no idea
three-quarters of people cannot name the
three branches of government most cannot
tell you why the Declaration of
Independence was written only one in
three people can a name a single thing
that the First Amendment protects and
that’s just basic stuff
how about federalism the role of the
Senate our tax system all right leave
but we’ve got a long way to go in terms
of just basic knowledge but we need
critical literacy to evaluate what we
learn about government about one in
three Americans are either illiterate or
only rudimentary readers less than half
can read a book at an eighth grade level
and tell you what it’s about and the
rest of us those sitting in this room
and myself from time to time those who
can do better we don’t fifty nine
percent of the time we don’t even bother
to read the stories behind the links
that we post on social media and the
Internet if our democracy depends on a
well informed citizenry we should be
afraid or we could just write it off
because half of us don’t vote anyway but
the reason why we don’t vote is because
we’re not well informed education levels
are the best predictor we have of who’s
going to show up at the polls better
than income levels people with advanced
degrees many of you out there
you show up 80% of the time at the other
end of the spectrum people who don’t
finish the ninth grade they vote less
than 20% of the time this is not a new
problem our nation started as an
experiment in democracy our founding
fathers were familiar with Monarchs of
Europe and taxation without
representation here at home they wanted
Americans to govern themselves not be
ruled by the elites or by kings and
queens but funny enough a lot of those
founding fathers weren’t sure this
little experiment called America would
work they knew democracy had real risks
that democracy could easily turn into
mob rule that the masses could take land
away from the wealthy and redistributed
to the poor to the poor
but what they seem to fear most was the
possibility the average everyday people
would be manipulated
but unscrupulous politicians or
defrauded at the ballot box rather than
seize power for themselves
the people would just give it away to
someone else
so our first president’s people like
George Washington John Adams Thomas
Jefferson implored the young nation to
invest in its education system John
Adams before we even had the United
States Constitution John Adams was busy
writing the Massachusetts Constitution
and in it he put this nation’s very
first education clause and he said that
education is necessary to preserve our
individual liberties and rights and for
that reason it should be the duty of
government so long as that government
existed to support the public education
system Thomas Jefferson followed John
Adams Thomas Jefferson said that we
should if necessary amend the United
States Constitution to support the
public education system we didn’t have
to amend it because Congress started
giving out land to support the public
schools and these early efforts paid off
surprising to a lot of folks but this
rough-and-tumble nation by the mid-1800s
enrolled a larger percentage of people
in public schools than any country in
the world except for Prussia but these
systems were still rudimentary in many
respects they had a long way to go we
still weren’t living up to democracy’s
promise we excluded a lot of people from
the ballot box women people without land
the south still held millions of African
Americans in slavery and it was a crime
to teach them to read and write so the
nation had to transition towards a
better democracy a more full democracy
and it faced many of the same channel
that we face today extremely polarized
political parties a congressperson from
South Carolina actually came senator
Sumter on the floor of the Senate we had
highly polarized political parties we
had serious debates about who could be a
citizen and how they might participate
or not we had enormous education
deficits and we had a system of
self-government entirely dependent upon
the ability to decipher the written word
we tend to think of those times as much
different today than today but just like
today everything revolved around the
flow of information and it was a very
chaotic flow of information in the
1800’s they had the penny presses those
penny presses were in many respects just
like the blogs that we read today
everybody had one and they were just as
polarizing every national state and
local political party had its very own
penny press every little city and town
and hamlet from the tip of Maine to the
western frontier had its own penny press
and a lot of people scattered in all of
those places they just wrote their own
penny presses because they thought
somebody might want to read it some
focused on scandal intrigue some focused
on politics in the 1800’s late 1800s
there were more newspapers than any
other period in history people say
Donald Trump has his own news station in
the 1800s the president had his own
newspaper they called it his official
organ and it’s express purpose was to do
his bidding sometimes they even had
federal employees helping them out and
think about it at that point in time the
nation was largely rural and
disconnected if you are a citizen in
most places in America you’d have no way
of knowing what was going on in
Washington DC in your state capital what
was being voted on unless you read the
newspapers and those newspapers had lots
of conflicting accounts people had to
sort through them to get the bottom of
things so at the end of the Civil War
Congress saw a solution to bind this
nation back together to rebuild this
democracy and to bring millions of new
people into our nation as citizens that
solution was public education Congress
told southern states that if they wanted
to re-enter the Union they had to get
serious about democracy that meant two
things first they had to extend the
ballot to African Americans second they
had to vastly expand their public
education systems as a result all the
southern states rewrote their state
constitutions and in them they
guaranteed access to public education
many northern states soon followed their
lead and in fact following the Civil War
no state would ever again enter this
union of the United States of America
without guaranteeing public education to
all of their citizens in their
constitutions this time period offers a
few important lessons first is the
general importance of public education
to democracy second those public
education systems have to be uniformly
and equally open to everyone
and those public education systems have
to prepare young people to grow up to be
citizens to participate so what do we do
with these lessons today well I think
there’s two things we need to do as a
nation and there’s a couple of simple
things that we can do as individuals as
a nation the first thing we need to do
is to make sure that our schools are
providing the skills and now
and lessons our children need to become
citizens to participate in our democracy
as the flow of information continues to
evolve and continues to be increasingly
unreliable as Judge few suggested our
children need to know how to do a lot
more than just read and write the
written word they need to be able to
evaluate sources to decode factual
claims to spot bias and to ultimately
make a judgement about what they’ve read
studies showed that young people are
basically lost in their ability to
distinguish fake news from fact and we
have spent the last two decades moving
our school systems away from the top of
learning opportunities that our children
need we’ve spent so much time narrowing
the curriculum focusing on standardized
testing and accountability for those
tests we’ve rendered civics some of that
basic stuff that’s in when everyone
seems to not know we have rendered
civics and critical literacy into
sideshows unfortunately so much of what
our children need to know to breathe to
grow up and participate in this
democracy aren’t things that you can
easily test on a standardized exam the
second thing we need to do is to make
sure that our schools have the resources
they need to deliver these opportunities
money
studies show that a 20% increase in
school funding is enough to cut the
black-white graduation gap in half
recent studies also show that this past
decade of budget cuts have decreased
student achievement across the board and
yet today most states continue to spend
less on education ten years after the
recession including in this state then
we did a decade ago and has always been
the case and sadly been the case the
most disadvantaged children in the most
disenfranchised communities in America
get less than everyone else we cannot
claim that our education system is
leveling the playing field we cannot
claim our education system is ensuring
our democracy’s future if we will not
adequately and equally fund it so what
can we do as individuals it’s not quite
that serious well there’s some easier
stuff that we can do we as adults face
many of the same challenges as our
children but nobody’s coming to rese
call us it’s on us to make things better
and for now it’s in our hands that this
democracy is entrusted we’re in both a
worse and a better position than we have
ever been in the entire history of the
world we’re in a worse position because
we got a lot more to deal with we got
radio TV internet television social
media cell phones it’s a lot to keep up
with it’s a lot of distraction but we’re
in a better position because for the
very first time in history we have
direct access to real information we
don’t have to take anybody’s word for it
we can read Betsie devices speech on
school vouchers we can download and look
at the data that she bases her opinion
on we can read transcripts of
congressional hearings on school safety
the achievement gap school choice we can
research anything we want from the
comfort of our couches thanks to Steve
we need to take advantage of that
opportunity and be better stewards of
information so how do we do that I think
there’s two pretty simple ways we can do
that as a researcher as a scholar as a
citizen I propose these two things first
pick something to be an expert in and
learn that area you can’t be an expert
in everything but you can learn a few
things really well and learn them really
well means getting a hold of basic
information with that information you’ll
consume the news much differently than
you ever have before you’ll participate
in the conversation much differently
than you ever have before my area of
expertise is public education and I know
exactly where the foundation of my
knowledge is and I read some basic
information same stuff every year right
just a little bit different so when new
stuff comes to me I can filter it
through that basic information I can
draw real opinions based upon some basic
facts I don’t have to take anybody’s
word for it so pick something decide to
be an expert in it and research it like
you bind something on Amazon the
information is there it won’t be in
review format but the information is
there take advantage of it the second
thing that I would suggest is never ever
retweet or post anything that you
haven’t read right start reading real
stories if you need another rule for
yourself just make a full and
substantive comment on anything that you
decide to post this will force you to
read the underlying story and think
about it before you put it out there for
the rest of us you won’t post as much
but what you do post will be better for
the rest of us but reading the same old
stories is far from enough we need to
spend a lot more time finding resources
we can trust not stories that we like
new sources today are much like the
penny presses they’re far from being
created equal
they all have different motivations and
different levels of quality control we
need to evaluate those sources
distinguish news from opinion news from
entertainment and if there’s something
really important never rely upon one
source look for another source with a
similar story and remember the stories
that we tell and retell will impact our
friends our families our communities so
much of what we absorb as being true or
untrue depends on those around us and
this is most true for young people no
matter what our schools do or don’t do
we will play a huge role in shaping
their futures so whether you’re a parent
and aunt uncle brother sister friend
cousin engage young people and the
issues of the day but never ask them to
regurgitate your opinion pepper them
with questions not information and if
they decide to volunteer an opinion
don’t say that’s right or that’s wrong
say where’d you hear that and why do you
think that but just asking those simple
questions whether it’s of young people
our friends or ourselves we can put this
nation back on the path to engaged an
enlighten citizenship in the democracy
that our founding fathers first envisioned for us thank you
places political power in the hands of
the people to be successful however it
needs those people to be well informed
well informed citizens will not be
easily manipulated not easily oppressed
well-informed citizens will guard their
freedoms jealously and when those
citizens get it wrong and they will get
it wrong from time to time they’ll
disagree with one another and this keeps
things from moving too far in the wrong
direction but the inherent tension of a
democracy is the need to place political
power in the hands of people who may or
may not be well informed our founding
fathers the ones who wrote the state and
federal constitutions under which we
live firmly believe that the only
solution was to create public education
systems that prepared people to
participate in democracy today I want to
talk to you about the real dangers our
nation faces when we fail to provide
those educational opportunities and when
we as adults just get lazy in our
everyday lives today civics and critical
literacy are well critical by civics I
mean how government works
most people have next to no idea
three-quarters of people cannot name the
three branches of government most cannot
tell you why the Declaration of
Independence was written only one in
three people can a name a single thing
that the First Amendment protects and
that’s just basic stuff
how about federalism the role of the
Senate our tax system all right leave
but we’ve got a long way to go in terms
of just basic knowledge but we need
critical literacy to evaluate what we
learn about government about one in
three Americans are either illiterate or
only rudimentary readers less than half
can read a book at an eighth grade level
and tell you what it’s about and the
rest of us those sitting in this room
and myself from time to time those who
can do better we don’t fifty nine
percent of the time we don’t even bother
to read the stories behind the links
that we post on social media and the
Internet if our democracy depends on a
well informed citizenry we should be
afraid or we could just write it off
because half of us don’t vote anyway but
the reason why we don’t vote is because
we’re not well informed education levels
are the best predictor we have of who’s
going to show up at the polls better
than income levels people with advanced
degrees many of you out there
you show up 80% of the time at the other
end of the spectrum people who don’t
finish the ninth grade they vote less
than 20% of the time this is not a new
problem our nation started as an
experiment in democracy our founding
fathers were familiar with Monarchs of
Europe and taxation without
representation here at home they wanted
Americans to govern themselves not be
ruled by the elites or by kings and
queens but funny enough a lot of those
founding fathers weren’t sure this
little experiment called America would
work they knew democracy had real risks
that democracy could easily turn into
mob rule that the masses could take land
away from the wealthy and redistributed
to the poor to the poor
but what they seem to fear most was the
possibility the average everyday people
would be manipulated
but unscrupulous politicians or
defrauded at the ballot box rather than
seize power for themselves
the people would just give it away to
someone else
so our first president’s people like
George Washington John Adams Thomas
Jefferson implored the young nation to
invest in its education system John
Adams before we even had the United
States Constitution John Adams was busy
writing the Massachusetts Constitution
and in it he put this nation’s very
first education clause and he said that
education is necessary to preserve our
individual liberties and rights and for
that reason it should be the duty of
government so long as that government
existed to support the public education
system Thomas Jefferson followed John
Adams Thomas Jefferson said that we
should if necessary amend the United
States Constitution to support the
public education system we didn’t have
to amend it because Congress started
giving out land to support the public
schools and these early efforts paid off
surprising to a lot of folks but this
rough-and-tumble nation by the mid-1800s
enrolled a larger percentage of people
in public schools than any country in
the world except for Prussia but these
systems were still rudimentary in many
respects they had a long way to go we
still weren’t living up to democracy’s
promise we excluded a lot of people from
the ballot box women people without land
the south still held millions of African
Americans in slavery and it was a crime
to teach them to read and write so the
nation had to transition towards a
better democracy a more full democracy
and it faced many of the same channel
that we face today extremely polarized
political parties a congressperson from
South Carolina actually came senator
Sumter on the floor of the Senate we had
highly polarized political parties we
had serious debates about who could be a
citizen and how they might participate
or not we had enormous education
deficits and we had a system of
self-government entirely dependent upon
the ability to decipher the written word
we tend to think of those times as much
different today than today but just like
today everything revolved around the
flow of information and it was a very
chaotic flow of information in the
1800’s they had the penny presses those
penny presses were in many respects just
like the blogs that we read today
everybody had one and they were just as
polarizing every national state and
local political party had its very own
penny press every little city and town
and hamlet from the tip of Maine to the
western frontier had its own penny press
and a lot of people scattered in all of
those places they just wrote their own
penny presses because they thought
somebody might want to read it some
focused on scandal intrigue some focused
on politics in the 1800’s late 1800s
there were more newspapers than any
other period in history people say
Donald Trump has his own news station in
the 1800s the president had his own
newspaper they called it his official
organ and it’s express purpose was to do
his bidding sometimes they even had
federal employees helping them out and
think about it at that point in time the
nation was largely rural and
disconnected if you are a citizen in
most places in America you’d have no way
of knowing what was going on in
Washington DC in your state capital what
was being voted on unless you read the
newspapers and those newspapers had lots
of conflicting accounts people had to
sort through them to get the bottom of
things so at the end of the Civil War
Congress saw a solution to bind this
nation back together to rebuild this
democracy and to bring millions of new
people into our nation as citizens that
solution was public education Congress
told southern states that if they wanted
to re-enter the Union they had to get
serious about democracy that meant two
things first they had to extend the
ballot to African Americans second they
had to vastly expand their public
education systems as a result all the
southern states rewrote their state
constitutions and in them they
guaranteed access to public education
many northern states soon followed their
lead and in fact following the Civil War
no state would ever again enter this
union of the United States of America
without guaranteeing public education to
all of their citizens in their
constitutions this time period offers a
few important lessons first is the
general importance of public education
to democracy second those public
education systems have to be uniformly
and equally open to everyone
and those public education systems have
to prepare young people to grow up to be
citizens to participate so what do we do
with these lessons today well I think
there’s two things we need to do as a
nation and there’s a couple of simple
things that we can do as individuals as
a nation the first thing we need to do
is to make sure that our schools are
providing the skills and now
and lessons our children need to become
citizens to participate in our democracy
as the flow of information continues to
evolve and continues to be increasingly
unreliable as Judge few suggested our
children need to know how to do a lot
more than just read and write the
written word they need to be able to
evaluate sources to decode factual
claims to spot bias and to ultimately
make a judgement about what they’ve read
studies showed that young people are
basically lost in their ability to
distinguish fake news from fact and we
have spent the last two decades moving
our school systems away from the top of
learning opportunities that our children
need we’ve spent so much time narrowing
the curriculum focusing on standardized
testing and accountability for those
tests we’ve rendered civics some of that
basic stuff that’s in when everyone
seems to not know we have rendered
civics and critical literacy into
sideshows unfortunately so much of what
our children need to know to breathe to
grow up and participate in this
democracy aren’t things that you can
easily test on a standardized exam the
second thing we need to do is to make
sure that our schools have the resources
they need to deliver these opportunities
money
studies show that a 20% increase in
school funding is enough to cut the
black-white graduation gap in half
recent studies also show that this past
decade of budget cuts have decreased
student achievement across the board and
yet today most states continue to spend
less on education ten years after the
recession including in this state then
we did a decade ago and has always been
the case and sadly been the case the
most disadvantaged children in the most
disenfranchised communities in America
get less than everyone else we cannot
claim that our education system is
leveling the playing field we cannot
claim our education system is ensuring
our democracy’s future if we will not
adequately and equally fund it so what
can we do as individuals it’s not quite
that serious well there’s some easier
stuff that we can do we as adults face
many of the same challenges as our
children but nobody’s coming to rese
call us it’s on us to make things better
and for now it’s in our hands that this
democracy is entrusted we’re in both a
worse and a better position than we have
ever been in the entire history of the
world we’re in a worse position because
we got a lot more to deal with we got
radio TV internet television social
media cell phones it’s a lot to keep up
with it’s a lot of distraction but we’re
in a better position because for the
very first time in history we have
direct access to real information we
don’t have to take anybody’s word for it
we can read Betsie devices speech on
school vouchers we can download and look
at the data that she bases her opinion
on we can read transcripts of
congressional hearings on school safety
the achievement gap school choice we can
research anything we want from the
comfort of our couches thanks to Steve
we need to take advantage of that
opportunity and be better stewards of
information so how do we do that I think
there’s two pretty simple ways we can do
that as a researcher as a scholar as a
citizen I propose these two things first
pick something to be an expert in and
learn that area you can’t be an expert
in everything but you can learn a few
things really well and learn them really
well means getting a hold of basic
information with that information you’ll
consume the news much differently than
you ever have before you’ll participate
in the conversation much differently
than you ever have before my area of
expertise is public education and I know
exactly where the foundation of my
knowledge is and I read some basic
information same stuff every year right
just a little bit different so when new
stuff comes to me I can filter it
through that basic information I can
draw real opinions based upon some basic
facts I don’t have to take anybody’s
word for it so pick something decide to
be an expert in it and research it like
you bind something on Amazon the
information is there it won’t be in
review format but the information is
there take advantage of it the second
thing that I would suggest is never ever
retweet or post anything that you
haven’t read right start reading real
stories if you need another rule for
yourself just make a full and
substantive comment on anything that you
decide to post this will force you to
read the underlying story and think
about it before you put it out there for
the rest of us you won’t post as much
but what you do post will be better for
the rest of us but reading the same old
stories is far from enough we need to
spend a lot more time finding resources
we can trust not stories that we like
new sources today are much like the
penny presses they’re far from being
created equal
they all have different motivations and
different levels of quality control we
need to evaluate those sources
distinguish news from opinion news from
entertainment and if there’s something
really important never rely upon one
source look for another source with a
similar story and remember the stories
that we tell and retell will impact our
friends our families our communities so
much of what we absorb as being true or
untrue depends on those around us and
this is most true for young people no
matter what our schools do or don’t do
we will play a huge role in shaping
their futures so whether you’re a parent
and aunt uncle brother sister friend
cousin engage young people and the
issues of the day but never ask them to
regurgitate your opinion pepper them
with questions not information and if
they decide to volunteer an opinion
don’t say that’s right or that’s wrong
say where’d you hear that and why do you
think that but just asking those simple
questions whether it’s of young people
our friends or ourselves we can put this
nation back on the path to engaged an
enlighten citizenship in the democracy
that our founding fathers first envisioned for us thank you
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