Collegiate Times

On the whole, a large majority of United States citizens today suffer from the same irritating problem. To put it bluntly, they are ignorant.

The thing about ignorance is it keeps a lot of problems from being solved. For example, I was appalled to know that half of my political science class had no idea who Harriet Miers was ? they had never heard the name. Have we become so disillusioned as a society that we ignore the blatantly obvious?

My suggestion is that the previous statement is about as true as it gets. People are selfish and thus ignorant. Of course it isn?t difficult to see the problems that affect you as an individual on a daily basis, but the problems of the person sitting next to you on the next Blacksburg Transit aren?t anything of importance. Is it safe to say that in the United States today, we are so consumed with bettering ourselves and making sure everything is going the way we want it that we ignore the dilemmas of those around us? Absolutely.

I?m not suggesting that every one of us should pick up the New York Times or whatever other newspaper is available and learn about every crisis that has been covered in the last year in a specific country. Consider this ? Just because you aren?t suffering from a problem doesn?t mean it doesn?t exist and other people don?t suffer from it.

Generalizations in life have never ceased to amaze me. My junior year of high school, I moved to a new place late in the second semester and was faced with a new group of students, the majority of whom had more money than they knew what to do with. However, I wasn?t one of those students. I must say I was utterly flabbergasted when a teacher suggested that all of us were stuck-up ?brats.? Without knowing anything about the backgrounds of most of us, he supposed that because we lived in a wealthy area, everything had always been handed to us on a silver platter. His ignorance prevailed in a place where he was supposed to be educating a group of impressionable teenagers. Instead of instilling the knowledge he had on the subject, he instilled a sense of ignorance and thus the problem becomes a pattern.

College didn?t change my view on ignorance; if anything it became stronger. Since becoming a student at Virginia Tech, I have been told that crimes against women, sexual or otherwise, were not a problem on this campus and that racism and a lack of diversity was not a problem on this campus. I can?t begin to count how many people I have encountered who go along with the political views of their parents without being informed. Perhaps I was expecting too much to think that in an institution for higher education people would have a desire to experience all that there is to life, not just what they think it encompasses. Following high school, college became only another part of the circle of ignorance.

Amazingly enough, ignorance exists in all aspects of life. It becomes the excuse for the inexcusable. I find it quite humorous that it is allowed to proliferate to the extent that it does. If a state policeman pulled me over for speeding and I was not wearing a seatbelt, offering ignorance of a seatbelt law in Virginia would not be a viable excuse. I would simply be issued another ticket on top of the speeding ticket. Why then does this inability to employ ignorance as a justification not seep down into the rest of society? Unfortunately, it is because people simply don?t want it to. If I can get by dealing with only my own problems and never becoming aware that problems outside of those that affect me directly exist, I can?t think of a reason to change. After all, this is how everyone acts ? why should I care about someone else?s problems if they aren?t going to care about mine?

Ignorance is not a problem in America ? it is an epidemic. To only suggest that people should stop using it as an excuse in life is simply not enough. Congratulations to all of you, you made it to college. Try using this time as a chance to experience the world through someone else?s eyes and stop being ignorant of the fact that in the game of life each of us is dealt a different hand of cards.