Americans should be familiar with "their constitutional forms, what their government has done well and what it has done badly between the last six months and 50 years, and something about public budgets where money comes from and where it goes," Muirhead said.
The public school system often falls short of providing students with basic civic knowledge, Muirhead said. Many high school students do not understand the organizational structure of the U.S. government.
"They see no difference between the local and national levels," he said. "They don't understand that different levels of government do different things."
The deficiency in knowledge stems from a lack of national standards for civic education, Muirhead said. Implementing mandatory civics exams as a pre-requisite for high school graduation would greatly increase general public knowledge of politics and economics. Although civics should be taught in public school, it could incorporated in the context of a history class or some other academic subject, Muirhead said Although basic civic knowledge is lacking, Muirhead also said that the media tends to exaggerate the level of ignorance in the general population.
"A lot of the evidence that citizens are ignorant is questionable," Muirhead said. "[That] leads me to wonder what is motivating those who wish to expose it."
He cited a poll designed to test college students' civic knowledge, which 71 percent of students tested failed. The exam, like many others, was poorly designed and asked questions that were irrelevant to the knowledge required of an average citizen in understanding political issues, Muirhead said.
"The questions on the exam were largely disconnected from civic knowledge," Muirhead said, "On one hand, the questions were too easy and on the other they were too hard."
Muirhead emphasized throughout the lecture that he takes a very "sympathetic posture" toward the American public's civic ability.
"My presumption is that citizens by and large must know what they're doing," he said.
When asked how the lack of civic knowledge among Americans affects the political system, Muirhead responded that it "probably empowers political elites who are ideologically more extreme than the average American." This gives those in power, on both ends of the spectrum, "more latitude to pursue agendas that most Americans disagree with," he said.
This lack of knowledge keeps most citizens ignorant of the issues and effectively silent in the political decision-making process, Muirhead said in an interview with The Dartmouth. If the average American were to become more knowledgeable about the political system, then "the people in power would be less able to please small groups with narrow agendas."
Separating a good citizen's nature and actions from what a good citizen should know is of utmost importance, according to Muirhead.
"The hardest thing in the world is to think," he said. "Everything in the world conspires to make you not think."
