American Civic Ignorance

Kerby Anderson, Point of View: Apparently we are a nation that knows very little about politics and history. That is about the only conclusion you can draw from an experiment done by Newsweek magazine. Newsweek gave 1,000 Americans the U.S. Citizenship Test and found that 38 percent failed.

Civic ignorance is nothing new. Americans have always had ignorance about or misunderstandings about our political structure and our nation’s history. But at a time when so much information is available at our fingertips on the Internet, you would hope we might do a little better. If anything, we seem to be doing worse.

Nearly three fourths (73%) didn’t know why we fought the Cold War. A stunning 70 percent didn’t know that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Nearly two thirds (65%) couldn’t figure out that the Constitution was written at the Constitutional Convention. And even more interesting was the fact that 6 percent couldn’t even circle Independence Day on a calendar. These last two questions should be about as obvious as the question: Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?

Oh, there is more. Nearly two thirds (63%) got the number of Supreme Court justices wrong. By the way, in case you are wondering, that number is nine. Forty-three percent didn’t know that the first ten amendments to the Constitution are the Bill of Rights. It’s hard to imagine that these citizens could grasp the idea of checks and balances if they didn’t have some basic understanding of the structure of our government.

They didn’t know historical figures. Fifty-nine percent had no idea that Susan B. Anthony fought for women’s rights, and 23 percent didn’t know that Martin Luther King fought for civil rights. They also couldn’t name current leaders. Fifty-nine percent did not know the speaker of the House, and 29 percent couldn’t name the vice president.

While it may be easy to roll your eyes at a nation of know-nothings, we need to stop and consider that the people who couldn’t answer these questions nevertheless vote and express their opinions to elected officials. They are making decisions about candidates and issues based upon a woeful lack of knowledge of civics. Obviously we need to do a better job of educating the public through the schools and the media. I’m Kerby Anderson, and that’s my point of view.

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