What we don't know we can't defend
- educationalsentine
- Jan 24, 2024
- 2 min read
The knowledge of the American citizenry about the documents that are the blueprint for governing our nation is appalling! Both in adults and students, as the two studies below reveal.
This is a national problem but it is also a problem in our very own community. I know of someone who is attempting to teach people, for free, about the Constitution and the joys and responsibilities of freedom but nobody in this area seems to be interested. Snowmobiling and fishing are far more important than controlling big government, which businesses are allowed to be open, what churches are allowed to do, inflation and having freedom.
The Annenberg Civics Knowledge Survey, conducted since 2006, focuses on the public’s understanding of the Constitution of the United States. Since 2013, the civics knowledge survey has been conducted annually for Constitution Day (Sept. 17) as the Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey. (The civics knowledge survey had been conducted by telephone but beginning in 2023, the survey is being conducted online only. The mode change from telephone to online surveys means that earlier years’ findings on knowledge cannot be fairly be compared with those in 2023 onward.) Among the 2023 findings:
Many U.S. adults don’t know the rights protected under the First Amendment — and the only one with wide recognition is freedom of speech, which 77% knew. The other rights were known by under half of respondents: freedom of religion was known by 40% and freedom of the press by 28%. See the survey for full results.
While 66% in our could name all three branches of government (executive, legislative, judicial), 17% could not name any.
NAEP has been testing U.S. history since 1994, civics since 1998, and the results have always been bleak. At its peak in 2014, the “Nations Report Card” showed a meager 18 percent of eighth graders to be “proficient” in history while 22 percent reached that threshold in civics. Year after year, assessment after assessment, those two key subjects have reaped the lowest scores of anything tested by NAEP.
The new NAEP results just underscore the blunt fact that the vast majority of U.S. 8th graders don’t know squat about U.S. history or civics.
Read the entire report:
It’s sad that people have devolved to this level. The history and civics of our country are quite interesting, full of things of interest to all, even the many accomplishments of blacks from the 1700s to the 1900s when certain administrations and policies dampened their involvement. Oh, that reminds me, the Progressive era is rather interesting although depressing.
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