America needs to get better grades in civics, history
To hear some people tell it, we are a nation of ignoramuses.
Well, not generally. Given America’s standing in the world and the preeminence of its economy, we must be doing something right.
But year after year organizations dedicated to civic health or education unleash reports that find Americans are, to put it diplomatically, kind of in the dark when it comes to the country’s history and the workings of its government.
The latest to do so is the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). The council released the results of a survey of 3,000 college undergraduates this week that found 60% of them did not know the term lengths for members of Congress. Also, only 37% knew John Roberts is the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, only 35% were aware that Mike Johnson is the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and just 31% knew that James Madison is the father of the U.S. Constitution.
OK, in fairness, not being able to pick out Madison as the father of the Constitution is hardly a fatal oversight, and Mike Johnson doesn’t come close to the star power of Taylor Swift. But ACTA can’t be faulted when it says the results “should concern all Americans.”
And earlier this year, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a report that said the country’s civic knowledge is “badly lagging.” In a survey of 2,000 registered voters, according to the report, only 1 in 3 knew there were three branches of government, and more than half did not know the number of members in the House of Representatives. Hilary Crow, vice president of civics at the U.S. Chamber Foundation, explained that even though Americans value civic participation “in theory,” she said that “we are sorely lacking in the basic knowledge that translates into informed, engaged citizenship.”
Crow added, “We are risking the long-term health of our civic culture and democracy itself.”
There’s an argument to be made that America’s apparent civic illiteracy is not the result of dimwittedness, but of stability – for the most part, the rule of law has prevailed, markets have functioned smoothly and we have had the luxury of taking a whole variety of freedoms for granted. If we lived in a country where tanks were frequently rolling down the boulevards, regimes were overthrown every couple of years and troops were massing at the border, we would have to know more about how our government functions out of sheer necessity.
But being clueless on how the government works or the country’s history makes it easy for misinformation to take hold and conspiracy theories to flourish. Some experts believe that some of the blame can be placed on schools that have placed too much emphasis on STEM subjects or meeting state standards and the social sciences have been sacrificed. No matter how it’s happened, though, it’s imperative that we improve our civic aptitude.
No one is expecting everyone to be able to name all three of Franklin Roosevelt’s vice presidents (they were John Nance Garner, Henry Wallace and Harry Truman, by the way) or offer up quotes straight from the Congressional Record. But knowing more about who we are and how our government functions would only make our democracy stronger.