We Americans say we value our Constitution and our civic history, but too many of us know too little about either. Survey after survey for years has shown an appalling lack of public knowledge of even the most rudimentary facets of our system. Last week the Intercollegiate Studies Institute released another such report, utterly convincing, showing that even college graduates across the country are almost hopelessly ignorant of the basics. Worse, the average score of college seniors, a pathetic 53.2 percent on a 33-question “civic literacy” exam, was almost no better than the 51.7 percent average score of freshmen. When it comes to their original missions of producing good citizens, our colleges are failing.
Consider the freedom to worship. When given five choices (four of them false) of something the Bill of Rights “explicitly” prohibits, a mere 27 percent of all Americans surveyed correctly said it forbids establishing an official national religion. Just 21 percent recognized that the phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people” came from the Gettysburg Address. For college graduates, the scores were barely higher: 32.83 percent and 23.73 percent, respectively.
And so on through the list of questions, all rigorously designed, most of them taken from widely used tests such as the naturalization exam or the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Huge numbers of Americans, including college students and graduates, don’t know what the Lincoln-Douglas debates were about, can’t name the three branches of government, and don’t even know that a business profit is “revenue minus expenses.”
These findings are disgraceful. They give evidence of nonchalance about the gifts bequeathed to us as Americans. Such nonchalance is a sign of ingratitude. On this Thanksgiving, then, let us vow to take more seriously our duties as citizens – duties that extend beyond voting, to actually knowing what we are voting about. As Americans, we have much to be thankful for. Let us show that gratitude by engaging more fully in civic life, so that government of, by and for the people will be preserved.
