Would you want a college student who didn’t know what country Kabul is in to help elect the leader of the free world?

Would you want a college student who thinks Roe v. Wade is about slavery to help elected the President of the United States?

Would you want a college student who doesn’t know that India and Japan are democracies and China and Cuba are not, to help put someone in the Oval Office for the next four and maybe even eight years?

Well, that may be exactly what is happening as the inmates appear to have taken over the asylum.

The New York Times reporting that more and more adults, who should know better, are caving to their children ,who are all but forcing their parents to cast a vote for Barack Obama.

“Their children made them do it,” is how the Times puts it.

Obama’s young, student supporters are ,according to the paper, sending their parents “the latest Obama YouTube videos, blog exhortations and ‘Tell Your Mama/Vote for Obama!’ bumper stickers.”

So, isn’t it great that students are politically engaged?

Sure…so long as they know something about the world in which they live. But, there is plenty of evidence that they do not.

The examples I cite at the top of this post come via an article written by Ted Gup ,who is a professor of journalism at Case Western Reserve University. He is describing students –college students–probably even Obama students–in his classes and just how ignorant they are of current events.  Gup’s experience is similar to what other professors have found in schools all across America. Indeed, I found similar examples in classes I taught at the USC School of Journalism, which is supposed to be one of the finest such schools in the nation!

Can they really be THAT ignorant?   YES THEY CAN BE

Gup tells how he asked his class of freshmen and sophomores how many had heard of the word “rendition?”—this after years of that word being used in newspapers and on television newscasts referring to the U.S. policy of shipping suspected terrorists off to other nations where they can be tortured to gain information.

No one in the class knew. And, when he told them, Gup says they were outraged this had been going on and wondered how this could have happened in America.

Gup’s answer was easy: He told his students to look around the room at one another and then he told them, they were “seated next to the answer.”

Gup says about one half of his class of 16 could not name a country bordering Israel, even though Middle Eastern politics and geography play such a crucial role in global events, especially the so-called war on terrorism.

Worse still, some of his students actually thought the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima ——-in 1975!!!!!!!  Wow!

A current affairs test?

Clearly schools, even so-called good ones such as USC, are failing their students. Parents are failing their children. The children are failing themselves.

So, what to do?

The idea of giving someone a test in order to vote seems almost un-American. But, maybe exceptions need to be made.  Just as drivers under 21 have certain restrictions placed on them in different states, maybe students need to be able to at least get 50 percent of the questions correct on a current affairs test in order to be allowed to vote?

Obviously, this wouldn’t really work and would raise issues such as..what about stupid adults? Should they have to pass a test,too?  Well, come to think of it……..

The answers are far too complex to explore in a simple blog posting, but it is important for older Americans to understand that listening to their children’s advice on whom to vote for may be one of the dumbest things they could ever do.

Obama has captured the imagination of the young; perhaps it is because they lack imagination?

The important thing for parents to remember is this—they actual DO know more than their kids…a lot more!  They should be helping their children decide the best person to be elected President and not the other way around.