A new poll released on Constitution Day (September 17 — no worries, we know you knew that) found that many Americans don’t know how their government works. And the problem is likely to get worse if the College Board goes through with its proposed changes to the AP U.S. History exam.
The Annenberg Public Policy Center poll found that only 36 percent of participants could name all three branches of the U.S. government while nearly just as many (35 percent) could not name a single one.
Just over a quarter of Americans (27 percent) know that Congress can override a presidential veto with a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate. And 21 percent of Americans incorrectly think that a 5-4 Supreme Court decision is sent back to Congress for reconsideration.
The poll also found more than half of Americans do not know which party controls the House and Senate.
With midterm general elections less than two months away, it isn’t promising that roughly a third of Americans know nothing about their government.
“An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people,” wrote Thomas Jefferson.
But how does our public education measure up to the task?
This month, a sixth grade teacher at McKinley Middle School in Washington, D.C. asked students to make a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting former President George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler. The assignment called them “two men of power who abused their power in various ways.”
Beyond making an apology, the teacher did not face any other consequences.
Equally egregious, but something Americans are only now becoming aware of, is the College Board’s new framework for the AP U.S. History Exam, called APUSH, that will effectively force American high schools to transform the way they teach U.S. history.
APUSH “inculcates a consistently negative view of the nation’s past. For example, the units on colonial America stress the development of a ‘rigid racial hierarchy’ and a ‘strong belief in British racial and cultural superiority,’” said Larry Krieger, an award-winning AP history teacher and an AP exam coach.
Further, “the Framework ignores the United States’ founding principles and their influence in inspiring the spread of democracy and galvanizing the movement to abolish slavery,” Krieger said. “Instead of a belief that America has a mission to spread democracy … the Framework teaches the nation ‘was built on a belief in white racial superiority and a sense of American cultural superiority.’”
The authors of APUSH (who the College Board initially refused to identify to critics) deliberately omit seminal works and heroes in American history ranging from John Winthrop’s “City Upon a Hill” sermon to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and even King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
Despite an obvious need for a rich American history and civics education in our schools and civil society, even the premier College Board is undermining one of the most necessary prerequisites of a free people.
For the full Annenberg poll, click here.
