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| Justin Herberger |
Have you ever read an article, or seen a news report that completely changed the way you thought about a subject?
What about, through the process of writing a paper, you realize as you read and understand a topic, the more you become uncomfortably aware of the extent of your own knowledge deficiency?
Confucius said, “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”
Not to offend the few people who are exceptions to this rule, but as the past few major political decisions have crossed my radar, I have realized my peers and I are exceptionally opinionated, but not necessarily knowledgeable.
Considering the availability of online newspapers, 24-hour television and other sources of this wealth of literacy we have at our fingertips, I think it is embarrassing how little we know about the world in which we live, let alone our own nation, state, town and university.
The first day of my American National Government and Politics class this semester, I was surprised to find out many of my classmates could not even recognize our House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Don’t worry, I quickly returned to Earth from my high of superiority when I realized that the quiz of our knowledge of the Federal Government extended past the names replayed on CNN every 30 minutes.
How do we expect to understand the complexities of a national health care overhaul, social security, the national deficit and every other important political issue by skimming the New York Times and CNN for the most interesting headlines in between episodes of “House” (guilty)?
Also, if we want to have a serious conversation about the big three (politics, religion and money) we should dignify that conversation by NOT having it on Facebook.
There’s just something about seeing a rant about how much you hate Obama sandwiched between your YouTube videos and personality quizzes that makes your political argument somewhat less effective.
Instead of piggybacking on the ideas and agendas of the people telling us what to think, wouldn’t our time be much better utilized reading more than an article and a Wikipedia page?
Think about our library. Just because of our association with Appalachian State University, we have access to Lexis Nexis and an endless supply of scholarly articles, essays and databases.
Not that I am volunteering to go assemble this information and become a scholar of current events, but instead of regurgitating “The Factor,” or “Countdown,” our knowledge should be more personalized and self-generated.
When we look at our opinions now, it should be with openness that they might change because the more you know, the more you realize what else you need to learn.
Herberger, a sophomore political science major from Cary, is a news reporter and online specialist. |
