A look at the trends in the education of our nation’s citizens and leaders; from books to digital media; what’s to come?
Embargo Date
2024-05-31
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
The education and learning habits of our nation’s citizens and leaders have changed and are changing dramatically. Contemporary American adults and adolescents spend substantial portions of their time online and acquire much of their knowledge and perspective via digital media. By contrast, history teaches that noteworthy citizens and leaders of the past devoted substantial portions of their time to book reading, and often to the reading of the classics of Western Civilization. What can we learn from this, and what might it mean for the future citizenry and leadership of our country? To advance toward any sort of normative or assertive claim about the value of these trends, we must first at least discern a trend in empirical reality – we must demonstrate that the ways in which worldviews were formed and are forming, through education, is changing, and we must demonstrate the significance of this trend. Through an empirical survey and analysis, this paper aims to demonstrate that (1) the education and mode of learning of our nation’s leaders has changed and is changing dramatically; and (2) the type of political leader our nation gets is likely changing, and changing in consequential ways.