Epistemological Deficit

      The is an article in the Nov 29 issue of Nation Magazine by Benjamin R. Barber (Walt Whitman Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University) entitled "America's Knowledge Deficit."  He says that even more alarming than the influence of money in politics is the knowledge deficit of the voters.  It's not that voters no longer know any facts (which they don't) but that they no longer seem to understand that there is such a thing as a fact, as distinct from an opinion. He claims that many of his students could not tell you in which century the American Civil War occurred, or on which continent we find Iraq. (These are college level students.)  But as depressing as this may be, even more depressing is that many students, and an increasing percent of the electorate, fail to appreciate that the answers to these questions would be facts--they are either true or false--they can be either proven or disproven.  They are not opinions.  No one seems to remember what a fact would look like, or how its truthfulness might be tested.
  The link I provided hits a pay wall--sorry.