Knowledge as Understanding: The Information Processing Approach to Political Learning

When The Onion, a satirical weekly and self-proclaimed finest news source in America, parodied the news reporting of the last century, the pseudo-article about the 1947 invention of “the supreme tool of learning-television” predicted that with the proliferation of television, every man in America will be professor of science or law within 6 years, and the schools will be obsolete by 1970 (The Onion, 1999). “The television world will be one where learning is easy, fun, and available to all” (p. 73). The United States will be “filled with active and intelligent citizens, rushing about in a whirlwind of discoveries, inventions, innovations and theories” (p. 73).