Among the signs of the end time, they insist, are increases in knowledge; the creation of a worldwide, cashless,electronic banking system that "carries the mark of the beast;" increases in violence and sexual immorality; a rise in "spiritualism - ala Harry Potter; earthquakes; mass animal deaths; false prophets such as the pope with his church as the antichrist; the ecumenical and world peace movements, etc.
Because the focus of these religious fanatics is on the next life, their core beliefs are profoundly anti-intellectual and require them to reject reason and fact-based evidence. Sound familiar? Hence, they are hostile to the government's safety net, secularism, and just about every public initiative that has been proposed since the beginning of Progressive era in the last part of the nineteenth century.
Although their numbers are small , this vocal and growing group of troglodytes and "true believers" - precisely because their fanaticism and missionary zeal - have become willing and unquestioning dupes in the army of nay-sayers that has been mustered by the likes of Rupert Murdoch, Karl Rove, the Koch brothers, Dick Armey and North Carolina's Art Pope, all of whom have more in common with the Anti-Christ than do either President Obama or Pope Francis.
The intersection of religious lunacy and the fervor of the right-wing moguls - who, with their private, unaccountable wealth, are determined to dismantle any democratic, accountable government that responds to the needs of its citizens - has fueled the anti-government hysteria that has become the signature of the Tea-Party. But the Tea Party's chorus that sings the funeral dirge for the federal government could not have precipitated the current gridlock and paralysis were it not for acquiescence, tacit acceptance and indifference of an increasing number of barely literate, poorly educated Americans.
An article in today's New York Times illustrates the magnitude of the problem. Richard Pérez-Peña ( "U.S. Adults Fare Poorly in a Study of Skills") reports that American adults lag well behind their counterparts in most other developed countries in the mathematical and technical skills needed for a modern workplace, according to a study released last Thursday. The study confirmed a well-documented pattern that showed a number of other countries surging past the United States in students' test scores and young people's college graduation rates which corresponds to a skills gap, extending far beyond school.
The study was based on new tests developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a coalition of mostly developed nations, and was administered in 2011 and 2012 to thousands of people, ages 16 to 65, by 23 countries. It documented that, in the United States, young adults in particular fare poorly compared with their international competitors of the same ages - in mathematics, technology, and in literacy. Sadly, middle-aged Americans - who, on paper, are among the best-educated people of their generation anywhere in the world - were barely better than middle of the pack in skills.
Richard Pérez-Peña reported that "In all three fields, Japan ranked first and Finland second in average scores, with the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway near the top. Spain, Italy and France were at or near the bottom in literacy and numeracy, and were not included in the technology assessment. The United States ranked near the middle in literacy and near the bottom in skill with numbers and technology. In number skills, just 9 percent of Americans scored in the top two of five proficiency levels, compared with a 23-country average of 12 percent, and 19 percent in Finland, Japan and Sweden."
Prior to the Great Recession, and the emergence of the Tea Party with its relentless assault upon public services, the United States spent more money as a proportion of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product -7 .5 percent - on education than did countries in the European Union, but the educational outcomes were significantly worse. The 2003 results from the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) documented the comparatively poor performance in mathematical proficiency, on average, of fifteen year olds in the United States. Out of 30 OECD countries which participated in PISA 2003, the average performance for the United States was statistically higher only than that of five countries (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Mexico and Turkey) and statistically lower than that of twenty countries.
Equally a cause for concern, as of 2006, was the fact that the average adolescent in European Union countries completed 17.5 years of education, versus his counterpart in the United States who, on average, completed only 16.5 years of education. In nine European countries, more young people entered university education than in the U.S. and, as of 2006, the United States slipped from first to seventh in the number adults aged 24-35 who had received a bachelor's degree, as opposed to Canada (53 percent), Japan (52 percent), Sweden (42 percent), Belgium (41 percent) and Ireland (40 percent).
The totality of the evidence suggests that American education, at almost every level, is experiencing a profound crisis and has failed to create a literate, educated citizenry. An earlier National Adult Literacy Survey in 2003 confirmed that over forty million Americans age 16 and older had significant literacy deficiencies. In addition, more than 20 percent of Americans read at or below a fifth grade level - which was far below the level needed to earn a living wage. The data with respect to scientific literacy was equally disquieting. It showed that Americans in general do not understand what molecules are, less than one third could identify DNA as a key to heredity, and one in five adults still thinks that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
These disturbing trends are replicated the area of citizenship education. If America's secondary schools and its colleges and universities are charged with the responsibility to create an educated citizenry, they have failed miserably in that mission. In a 2005 report by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 14,000 freshman and seniors at fifty colleges and universities were administered 60 multiple-choice questions which were intended to measure their knowledge of American history and government, world affairs, and the market economy.
The first of its major findings was that "America's colleges and universities fail to increase knowledge about America's history and institutions. There was a trivial difference between college seniors and their freshman counterparts regarding knowledge of America's heritage. Seniors scored just 1.5 percent higher on average than freshman, and, at many schools, seniors know less than freshman about America's history, government, foreign affairs, and economy. Overall, college seniors failed the civic literacy exam, with an average score of 53.2 percent, or F, on a traditional grading scale.
Thomas Jefferson observed that " ignorance is the enemy of democracy." George Washington wrote that "A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?"
The founding fathers, despite their rhetoric, were hardly democrats. As slave-owners and members of the landed gentry, they shared, in the words of John Adams, a commitment to "government by the rich, the well-born and the able." Nevertheless, one suspects that the founders would be appalled by the ascendancy of the Tea Party and its coterie of poorly-educated demagogues who profess to draw their inspiration from them, and who claim to venerate this country's foundational documents as sacred texts.
The present confluence of ignorance, hysteria and political paralysis suggests that Yeats was prescient and that the end-time - at least for this country as a functioning democracy - may be near at hand:
Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
