The Death of Why?: The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy [Paperback]

Obsessed with answers, we have lost sight of the power and value of questions. Debates over globalization, climate change, health care, and poverty will not be “solved” with simple answers, but that’s what Americans are being trained to expect. Andrea Batista Schlesinger argues that we’re besieged by cultural forces that urge us to avoid critical thinking and independent analysis. The media reduces politics to a spectator sport, standardized tests teach students to fill in the dots instead of opening their minds, and even the Internet promotes habits that discourage looking deeper.
 
But the situation isn’t hopeless. Schlesinger profiles individuals and institutions renewing the practice of inquiry—particularly in America’s youth—at a time when our society demands such activity from us all. Our resilience will depend on our ability to struggle with what we don’t know, to live and think outside comfortable bubbles of sameness, and, ultimately, to ask questions.Introduction: Questions and Power

Part I: Culture: Questions or Answers?
Chapter 1: Inquiry is Risky, Resilience is the Reward, and Other Lessons from Childhood
Chapter 2: Ideological Segregation by Click and by Clique
Chapter 3: Consuming Opinion
Chapter 4: In Google We Trust

Part II: Schools: Citizens or Consumers?
Chapter 5: The Three R’s and a Why
Chapter 6: No Piggybank Left Behind
Chapter 7: Questioning the System, or Beating it?
Chapter 8: The Marxist, Anti-American Conspiracy to Convert Young People to Engaged Citizenship

Part III: Politics: Engaged or Connected?
Chapter 9: Black and White and Dead All Over
Chapter 10: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Youth?
Chapter 11: Lights, Camera, Debate!
Conclusion: A Call for Slow Democracy
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
About the Author“From her start in politics as a teenager Andrea Batista Schlesinger has asked the imporl3¦