Americans’ ignorance about their own history and civics has been problematic for decades, but a new survey even more greatly indicts Generation Z and the educators and parents who aided its empty-headedness.
One particular question in the Lawsuit.org poll stood out, with people as a whole doing poorly on it and Gen Zers doing pathetically. Asked who it was in 1776 that Americans declared independence from, 42% of respondents could not name Great Britain. Worse, a stunning 64% of the young adults in Gen Z got the question wrong. This is roughly the U.S. history equivalent of being unable to say that five plus five equals 10.
Alas, the poll isn’t an anomaly, except insofar as it shows civic ignorance is even worse among those born after 1996 (the start date for Gen Z) than it was for preceding generations of civic illiterates. For more than two decades, comprehensive annual studies by groups such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute have found far too many students at supposedly elite schools, both entering and exiting college, are obtuse about U.S. history and government and that the vast majority of grade school “social studies” teachers don’t think teaching basic historical facts or the “key principles of American government” is important.
Allow a personal, anecdotal example. Just a few years ago, I was speaking with a small group of what were supposedly some of the finest students at what is generally acknowledged to be one of the finest universities in the land. When I made a pointed reference to the phrase “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor,” none of the students – not a single one – could identify the Declaration of Independence as the source of that phrase. Worse, this denseness manifested itself even though the Declaration had been a topic of a brief but notable colloquy less than a half-hour earlier, which should have put the Declaration at least near the front of their minds.
What was even worse than the fact that none could even recognize the linguistic style enough to guess that the phrase came from the Declaration was that the very concepts of “sacred honor” or of things worthy of risked lives seemed foreign to these collegians. The words and sentiments held no meaning for them; their souls were not thrilled by, but deadened to, calls for that sort of nobility of character.
If this sort of oblivion is widespread, it is a civilizational catastrophe. Neither nations nor liberty can long endure without a shared sense of overarching purpose, a shared adherence to bedrock values even amid varying opinions on lesser details, and a shared feeling of personal, inmost dedication to securing civilizational blessings for future generations.
Clearly, our post-secondary trainers of educators are failing in their jobs (even if some, of course, excel), and our heavily bureaucratized and unionized system of education at all levels is a mess. Good parents, though, are at least equally as responsible for instructing their children (and modeling) the essentials of good citizenship, yet somehow two generations of parents have fallen short.
In the end, though, individuals of every generation have a responsibility to their communities to broaden their frames of reference, learn on their own, show gratitude for their blessings, and be willing without coercion to treat civic awareness and citizenship, at least in a free country, as duties that are, yes, both sacred and a point of honor. Too many young adults fail to get their heads out of their, uh, their mobile devices, long enough to show a voluntary communal consciousness. That failure is shameful.
