A commentary by Gup in the April 11, 2008 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education Gup notes that today’s college students have turned out the world and it’s party our fault.
“Families and schools must instill in students the habit of following what is happening in the world,” Gup writes. “A global economy will have little use for a country whose people are so self-absorbed that
they know nothing of their own nation's present or past, much less the world's. There is a fundamental difference between shouldering the rights and responsibilities that come with citizenship — engagement, participation, debate — and merely inhabiting the land.”Gup is a professor of journalism at Case Western Reserve University and author of National of Secrets: The Threat of Democracxy and the American Way of Life. His commentary is well worth reading.
The last two paragraphs givel us Gup’s conclusion:
The noted American scholar Robert M. Hutchins said, decades ago: "The object of the educational system, taken as a whole, is not to produce hands for industry or to teach the young how to make a living. It is to produce responsible citizens." He warned that "the death of a democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment." I fear he was right.
I tell the students in my secrecy class that they are required to attend. After all, we count on one another; without student participation, it just doesn't work. The same might be said of democracy. Attendance is mandatory.
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