Where do the general public truly engage?

During the last week there has been a four-part In Our Time special on Radio 4, celebrating the 350th anniversary of The Royal Society. Towards the end of the final part one of the contributors emphasised the need for the general public to:

...learn to engage with the issues and make their own decisions such as they do in other areas of their life.

The need for public understanding of science to move beyond tabloid rhetoric is obvious, but I think the notion that there are great swathes of 'other areas' of public life where the general public are already making their own decisions is misguided.

The inability of the general public to "engage with the issues and make their own decisions" is reiterated on the web every minute of every day where it sometimes seems as though the amount of ignorance is only topped by the amount of hate - both reflecting the public's spoon-fed opinion from the country's right-wing press. Just a couple of minutes on the BBC's (moderated) Have Your Say will make the greatest optimist despair at the state of humanity. They are not engaging with the issues, but rather ranting like a drunk in a pub.

The solution for both would seem to be education, but whereas a little may help with a person's understanding of science, far more would be needed to help them look beyond their own vested-interests in the world of politics. Science should aspire to many things, but the fear and ignorance that people exhibit in the rest of their lives shouldn't be one of them.