Originally Posted by Bart
Let's take it from the top once again. No, I don't expect people to know that a 6 oz tube of toothpaste is considered a prohibited item. Nor do I expect people to know where lipstick falls on the prohibited item scale. Nor do I expect people to read up on every news article dealing with airport security.
However, the 8/10 plot was not some small human interest news article buried in the Metro section of the city newspaper nor was it a 60-second filler between world news and the story about the skinny kid who won the all-you-can-eat championship. And while your average citizen may not study current events with any degree of interest, I would think that anyone who is thinking about catching a flight on a commercial airliner would stop to think that perhaps there are some items prohibited at the security checkpoint either due to the 9/11 attacks, the recent news stories about some plot in Britain or just as a general reference to the ongoing Global War on Terror. I cannot believe that it is valid to assume that any person flying on commercial aircraft today would be totally ignorant of an airport security process or methodology given the breadth of these news events over the past several years, especially when news information is available in so many different forms. As I type this, there's a news ticker scrolling across the top of my monitor. All major news networks have adapted the news ticker across the screen; major networks interupt prime time programs with these scrolling news tickers. Sorry, I don't buy it that any person can come to the airport and be totally, completely caught off guard that airport security screens people and property for prohibited items.
From:
Keynote Lecture
Conference at the Steinhardt School of Education
New York University, 2 March 2006
Allan Goodman
Eighty-seven is the percent of college-educated adults in America today who were, according to a recent National Geographic Society survey, unable to locate Iraq on a map. Seventy is the percentage, according to a Gallup poll, that cannot name the current president of Russia or correctly identify the job that a person named Kofi Annan holds. Sixty-five percent cannot find France or the U.K. on a map; and despite the fact that the President of the United States is visiting India this week, fifty-six percent can’t locate the world’s largest democracy on a map either.
Although I cannot locate the statistics, the number of United States citizens who cannot identify the President is astounding - and if you think that everyone who goes to the airport for a flight should know what's banned, you've got your head in the sand.