Education and Democracy

In the United States, a child’s zip code can determine their professional future. Educational inequality is vast, with white students surpassing their racial minority peers in the classroom. While the government is aware of the education gap and organizations continue to take action in order to shrink it, its existence is a threat to America’s children and, relevant to our discussion, popular sovereignty.

Popular sovereignty is one of the three requirements of a democracy. In Chapter 1, Greenberg and Page outline seven important factors in which popular sovereignty may manifest. One important requirement of popular sovereignty is “high-quality information is available.” The voter must:

“have access to accurate political information, insightful interpretations, and vigorous debate” (Greenberg, 9).

The chapter provides examples of avenues through which citizens may acquire such information, such as government officials and the media. However, it completely leaves out the need for equal opportunity and quality education in order to make political decisions with high-quality information.

If students are unable to learn because their school’s funding cannot provide an adequate amount of textbooks, enough teachers, or even sanitary conditions, how can our democracy expect them to acquire the skills to absorb and synthesize high-quality political information? Can we really say that the United States is a nation of popular sovereignty if students in impoverished communities receive a lesser civics education than students from affluent neighborhoods?

In September of 2016, only 12 out of 44 Richmond City schools received accreditation, meaning that their academic performance is well below par. Richmond, a city with a long and continuing history of racial segregation, is hugely contributing to the education gap. Its racial minorities largely continue to receive education that year after year fails to receive government approval.

Yet, we continue to call ourselves a democracy. While access to high quality information is only one of seven components necessary to fulfill one of three requirements for democracy, a look into its efficacy reveals a difficult question. Do we really elect the “right” representative for our interests if we do not all have the education necessary to make the “right” decisions?

In our political climate, propaganda and a candidate’s personality can easily overshadow the real issues. I believe that our president, who is objectively under-qualified for the position, won the election in large part because of his charisma. He didn’t need to talk about the real issues in depth because he was, in part, targeting an audience without technical political knowledge. I wonder what the outcome of the election would have been if all American voters shared the same high-quality access to education.

I believe that the United States cannot provide all voters with high-quality information because it does not provide all students with high-quality public education. I won’t venture to say that this disqualifies the United States as a democracy, only that we cannot be truly democratic if we do not actively pursue educational equality.

7 Responses to "Education and Democracy"

Seyoum Settepani says:

September 7, 2017 at 2:17 pm

Economic inequality is due more to class differences than our form of government. The schools in rich neighborhoods are better than schools in poor neighborhoods because all schools are funded by property taxes. I do believe that we are guaranteed an equal education from the government but this promise is not a reality. That being said i still believe that we still consider this country a democratic one. This country is not exactly equal for every person but we do have liberties which make it possible to fight for equal rights and achieve what one thinks is morally right. A more equal education and education experience would be possible with changes with the method of funding public schools.
Seyoum Settepani says:

September 7, 2017 at 2:17 pm

Economic inequality is due more to class differences than our form of government. The schools in rich neighborhoods are better than schools in poor neighborhoods because all schools are funded by property taxes. I do believe that we are guaranteed an equal education from the government but this promise is not a reality. That being said i still believe that we still consider this country a democratic one. This country is not exactly equal for every person but we do have liberties which make it possible to fight for equal rights and achieve what one thinks is morally right. A more equal education and education experience would be possible with changes with the method of funding public schools.
Grant Golden says:

September 8, 2017 at 9:32 am

Even though I agree with this post and am a big advocate of everyone getting an equal and quality education, I do not not think that this should/ could be the reason of stopping from going and making a meaningful vote. I think anyone, regardless of level or quality of education, can inform themselves with the information they need to make an educated vote. I think it is about the level of interest you have in our country and where it is going and how much an individual wants to have a part in that. Unfortunately, as you showed with the voting statistics, our generation recently has not shown a lot of this interest. But, I do not feel like a lack of a quality education should stop people from informing themselves and increasing these numbers. Even though that would help in terms of making these kind of decisions, this is what our society has to grapple with and overcome.
Daniel Bonaventura says:

September 8, 2017 at 1:07 pm

In an ideal world, it would be great for all schools provide an equal education. But I do not believe that a lack of so, takes away from our status of a democracy. Although our policy on education is relatively socialist already, for our national government to provide uniform or equal schooling would be both extremely expensive for taxpayers, and almost certainly impossible. That being said I believe that the educational gap in schools throughout the U.S. is a problem that needs to be addressed. Which poses the question, how can this be achieved? How can local governments work with state and federal government to help cultivate better learning? What programs or policies can be implemented to ensure more qualified teachers and more productive learning environments?
Emily Dunbar says:

September 8, 2017 at 11:05 pm

I agree with your statements, there is so much inequality in America, how can you say that our government provides equal opportunities for all citizens and the idea that all citizens are politically equal. Yes, everyone has one vote, but the amount of well informed voters out there is slim. The majority of citizens, especially those in the lower class are ill-informed. Now I do not agree that it is or governments fault for this because all citizens have the responsibility to become well informed. It is not the government or the schools responsibility to teach every citizen, what is good and bad for this country. The whole point of a democracy is to allow its citizens to voice their opinions, not have the opinions of the powerful be repeated. This would create robots, just doing what they were told, creating a tyrannical government. It is not realistic to think that every citizen could be equally informed. Although we should try and create a better informed country and body of citizens, there has to be some give and take. The citizens must be willing to learn and become well informed in order to better our form of democracy.
Brittney Morris says:

September 10, 2017 at 4:22 pm

Hannah, I agree with your post. Education inequality is a huge issue in our country that is often unaddressed. The question that always runs through my mind is why are these low performing unaccredited schools punished more for not meeting standards? Shouldn’t the government want to give them more money to help them improve their level of education rather then punish them for not performing. It seems irrational to me that every individual in this country is given a vote and each vote counts equally, yet not every individual has the same access to information. How do we expect people to make logical/rational political decisions when they are not even receiving a basic education? I know this from personal experience, I am from a very low income high school and I was blown away by how far behind I felt when I first arrived at UR. It seemed unreal to me that I was passing the same federally or state regulated tests that other students were, yet my education was a much lower quality then most who attend UR. Receiving high quality information has to start somewhere and I believe elementary-high school education is where it should start!
Jackson Grace says:

September 11, 2017 at 5:19 pm

Your post made me think of the “man on the street” sort of videos filmed at some schools around the nation. In these videos, students are asked basic American history questions like “who did we fight in the Revolutionary War,” and often answer horribly wrong. Now these videos get sent around through social media and generally have one of two things attached to them depending on the political ideology of the reposter. They always either say “how has our school system failed these kids? we need to do something about this,” or “how are these people allowed to vote?” I think that both are somewhat reasonable questions, but we need to be very careful when discussing the failures of our education system and how educated a democratic citizen needs to be. Don’t get me wrong, I am in 100% agreement with you that if there are citizens with deficient levels of education then that is the fault of the state and not those people; however, something about talking about necessary levels of education for a democratic citizen and failing schools makes me uncomfortable. It may seem outlandish to you, but I have heard quite a few people using the exact same argument you made in reverse order. They’ll say “there are so many people who don’t even know who George Washington are who are voting,” in order to suggest that we should disenfranchise the less-well-educated. I don’t write this necessarily to criticize your position, because I’m in complete agreement; instead, I write just to make you aware of a possible rebuttal from the other side.

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