47
votes
New survey shows that many in the US lack knowledge of basic facts about government
Link information
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- Title
- Many Don't Know Key Facts About U.S. Constitution, Annenberg Civics Study Finds | The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania
- Authors
- Emily Maroni
- Published
- Sep 14 2023
- Word count
- 1852 words
This about sums it up. As amusing as it might be from a "haha Americans are so silly and dumb" perspective, the true issue lies with people voting to shape an idealized government without any understanding of what good governance means.
I won't lie, I had to look up the first amendment to refresh my memory of the list. I've had it hammered in my head my whole life, but the specific list of freedoms (speech, religion, press, right to assembly, and petition) just flew out of my head. I sort of blobbed most of it together under free speech in my head, with the mindset that free speech revolves around speaking against the government without repurcussions. I wonder if that's the case for others, too?
That aside, I'm more alarmed that so many people can't name any of the branches of government. We only have three: Legislative, Judicial and Executive. It's far from an advanced topic, it's some of the most basic knowledge you can have. I learned about them in elementary school, not a dedicated class about government.
This... Explains a lot about the past eight years, honestly.
Petition was the one I couldn't recall
And to add on to your final note here, it's really important to see what the Republicans are doing with the public school system, especially when it comes to history and access to an uncensored library. Who benefits from an unexpected public?
I learned about the first amendment in school, of course but I don't recall ever having to memorize its contents. I could describe it, but at no stage in my life could I have ever told you the specific list of freedoms it mentions.
To be honest, I don't remember us ever having to memorize any kind of list of anything (not dates, not times tables, not elements, not countries, etc.), other than some mathematical formulas and foreign language vocabulary, until I attended college.
At college, I had to do quite a lot of rote memorization (taxonomy, biochemistry cycles, etc.) for some overcrowded intro classes—which I, of course, promptly forgot as soon as the classes were over. I didn't actually start learning anything at the tertiery level until I got into more advanced classes, where tests were open-book and professors expected us to actually demonstrate our working knowledge.
Mind you, I attended a gifted secondary school, but just a run-of-the-mill university, and I imagine that's why I was taught differently. Rote memorization seems like a cop out for schools that lack the resources to ensure students actually understand the material. And when students don't understand the material they have memorized, it is highly likely that they will forget it.
Now, when I immigrated to Australia, I did have to memorize a bunch of civics trivia for my citizenship test. I got a perfect score on the test, yet I don't think I could answer a single one of those questions within 1–2 years, and my understanding of Australian governance lags far behind my understanding of American governance.
I do wonder if they did remember the branches, but completely forgot the names of them. I'm going to be honest here, I always forget the names for Legislative and Executive but I remember what they do and their part in the government. I usually don't have a problem discussing about them as long as I'm able to quickly google the names again.
Although I will say, I also didn't learn about it in elementary school. We started learning about it in 8th grade (so literally last year of middle school), and we never seriously connected it to what we learned in history until 10th grade when we learned about modern US history. I'm a bit surprised since I came from an elementary school that was pretty open about discussions on kid-friendly politics (so nothing like the death penalty or abortion) and how it might affect our country. Like I remember being handed Scholastic News magazines about if we should have a 51st state or being assigned month long projects on climate change, but never did we learn how the government actually functioned outside of the president. So that could also be a factor
A closely held belief of mine is that votes should be weighted by civic literacy. I am well aware of the historic use of literacy tests to disenfranchise minorities.
But I think on the whole, if you give less weight to voters who don't even know the most basic facts about our government or even reality itself, in the long run we'd probably end up with a much more functional system (i.e. one without people like Trump or MTG).
One in six? What are these public schools doing? Is civics not a mandatory class to take? These people don't even know what the President is. How horrifying.
It is mandatory, but something you learn once in like, 5th grade tends not to stick without reinforcement and repetition. People don't engage with civics unless they have to.
The fact that "How come Obama wasn't in the White House on 9/11?!" is a thing tells you all you need to know.
Stick a fork in U.S., we're done.
I read that headline and thought (did it also show that water is wet?).
That's really sad, but the article would, IMO, be more interesting if it showed a difference between how many americans understand basic civics and, say, how many understand the germ theory of disease, how many understand the relationship between sun exposure and the probability of developing melanoma, etc.
I really like that idea, I would like to see a cross-cutting survey asking general-knowledge questions about a wide range of disciplines. I bet a number of interesting correlations could be gleaned from that, beyond “Americans r dum.”
This story feels incomplete without any historical data to compare this to. How did civic knowledge fare in generations where our democracy was stronger?
Also via state! The education system varies so much by state that lumping them together feels like ignoring huge factors that could help us narrow down the problems
Not just by state but by school district. As long as schools are funded directly from property taxes there will be huge differences in quality.
they mention this a bit in the post:
but if you look at previous years, they also have a history of using these rather clickbaity "no one understands the government anymore" headlines:
2022: Americans’ Civics Knowledge Drops on First Amendment and Branches of Government
2019: Americans’ Civics Knowledge Increases But Still Has a Long Way to Go
2017: Americans Are Poorly Informed About Basic Constitutional Provisions
2016: Americans’ Knowledge of the Branches of Government Is Declining
2014: Americans know surprisingly little about their government, survey finds
Question to those in education. Is a semester of American Government still required in highschool? I graduated decades ago, but it was then.
For whatever it's worth, it was when I graduated in '09 in Florida.
I'd be surprised if it wasn't still required. I graduated in 2005 and had to. I even remember learning about government -- the like the three branches -- way earlier in either elementary or middle school.
Saw this for my state, Missouri:
That said, I'm not surprised that a large chunk of Americans (though apparently not the majority) don't know all of this. Of these:
I admit, I'd probably forget the right to petition the government, too. And I consider myself pretty keen on government and politics.
But to my point, people forget stuff from school or they just don't pay attention. There was that show, "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?" When I was in my earlier/mid 20s, I thought "Wow, how ridiculous people forgot all this stuff from school!" Now in my mid/late 30s, I find myself forgetting some things that I know I learned in school!
Graduated in 2021, so I might have a say? And my say is for my very liberal area in California, yes it's still mandatory. I think it's mandatory to pass the class get into California's public universities as well, though I have no clue if community college requires it.
We did also have teachers who would just not care, and as long as they had some evidence of work, you passed the class. In between the teacher strikes and teacher shortages, the pandemic, and how much keeping a kid from graduating complicates school reputation and funding and all, I wouldn't be surprised if there were some American Government (and Economics) teachers that straight up didn't or couldn't teach.
I couldn't find the age range of the demographics or the states they lived at in their survey so I will say, my word could definitely not be the demographics they're surveyed. Especially since I'm assuming someone who graduated in the mid 2000's is going to be taught the material differently than someone like me who graduated in 2021, despite both of us qualifying to partake in the surveys. Also education varies by state too much for me to ignore so I'd keep both factors in mind
(Editing it one last time. I swear it's 5AM, haven't slept at all, and the more I stare at it the more I keep reorganizing it.)
My coworker graduated in 2016 and it was required then (Illinois). However, she said she never did well in the class because she "doesn't get politics" which also speaks volumes.
I graduated in 1992 in Florida and we had a 1 semesterAmerican Gov't required as a senior in high school. I also had an "introduction to gov't" type class in 5th grade that covered the basics (3 branches, what their parts are, Bill of Rights, etc). In missle school, American Gov't lessons were rolled into History classes.
Edit: added a word
They specifically say they changed from telephone interviews to online interviews and expected that to skew the results upward. I went and looked at the historical results and last year we were doing better than 10-15 years before.
https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/americans-civics-knowledge-drops-on-first-amendment-and-branches-of-government/
I suspect the level of knowledge the survey is reporting has been around this level for a long time. Does anyone think that everyone 100 years ago knew the answers to all these questions?
Well obviously- once you know your facts about the government and your rights, you begin to question the government and its actions, and certain political party can't have THAT going on, now can it?
Ok, that's my bitter jaded response out of the way. To be more serious:
I graduated back in 2006, and you get the general idea of checks and balances, branches of government, etc. The problem is... this is a very idealized version of the government, and ignores just how much corruption actually exists. There's that old saying: power corrupts. And since this is the highest level of power in the government, it ultimately ends up being more corrupt than anyone wants to realize. The idealized form tries to say that mankind (preferably humankind) is equal; this does not address how many of the politicians (specifically the ones who have been in office for DECADES) may have developed a mindset of "Actually, I'm better than the rest of the population, and I DESERVE all these nice things."
Did we really need a study for this? I thought it was well known.
We have a survey like that every year; it's called Election Day.