On voting and basic knowledge and understanding

"[J]ust having the right to vote is meaningless if a citizen is disenfranchised by illiteracy or semi-literacy. Illiterate and semi-literate Americans are condemned not only to poverty, but also to the powerlessness of incomprehension. Knowing that the do not understand the issues, and feeling prey to manipulative oversimplifications, they do not trust the system of which they are supposed to be the masters. They do not feel themselves to be active participants in our republic, and they often do not turn out to vote. the civic importance of cultural literacy lies in the fact that true enfranchisement depends upon knowledge, knowledge upon literacy, and literacy upon cultural literary. To be truly literate, citizens must be able to grasp the meaning of any piece of writing addressed to the general."

E. D. Hirsch What Every American Needs to Know: Cultural Literacy, p. 12.

The U.S. is a huge country, with a great population, lots of different school providers and standards, and myriads of beliefs and views. However one thing that became obvious lately - as it does during every election campaign - was that there are plenty of voters who are not really able to engage with complex information. Since they cannot do that they cannot form a realistic idea of what the U.S.'s position is like in the world, nor of what is going on in their own country. This led to many fruitless and silly debates. (This isn't just an issue for Trump supporters, although it is a pronounced one for many Trump supporters.)

What Hirsch proposed and argued for in part of his work, was that education should equip people both with the skills and some particular basics of how to handle and deal with knowledge about their nation. That this would be quite useful is now obvious. There is a danger of course that such proposals can be hijacked by the state to push its own agenda and teach students an ideology or a nationalist vision which fosters loyalty even if the governments is doing evil. However, Hirsch's recommendations are fairly particular and interesting, and an updated core knowledge elements might be a welcome and useful tool against technocracy and cultural illiteracy.

Here you can have a look at Hirsch's bio at the site of the Core Knowledge Foundation he set up.

 And you can go on reading a bit about cultural literacy and some connected debates in The Atlantic and The Guardian.