Survey: 35% of Americans Cannot Name the Government’s Three Branches
“Ignorance is costly. You can’t protect and cherish rights that you don’t know you have”
People lack this knowledge, yet everyone seems like a politics expert these days.
Campus Reform reports:
35% of Americans cannot name all three branches of government: SURVEY
A new survey found significant gaps in Americans’ basic civic knowledge, including that more than one-third of U.S. adults cannot name all three branches of government.
The University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center found that just 65 percent of respondents correctly named the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The survey, conducted Aug. 6-9, included a nationally representative sample of 1,034 U.S. adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
The survey also examined Americans’ ability to identify the rights protected by the First Amendment.
Seventy-three percent of respondents named freedom of speech as a right protected under the First Amendment, while only 43 percent named freedom of religion, 31 percent named freedom of assembly, 29 percent named freedom of the press, and just 12 percent named the right to petition the government.
Only 9 percent could name all five protections, while 24 percent could not name a single one. Moreover, 25 percent of respondents mistakenly said the right to bear arms, protected under the Second Amendment, is a First Amendment right.
“Ignorance is costly. You can’t protect and cherish rights that you don’t know you have,” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director emerita of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, said.
The findings come as states including Iowa and Florida have adopted measures aimed at strengthening students’ knowledge of government and civics.
Iowa has recently implemented new civics requirements. The state now requires students to pass a civics test based on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services naturalization civics test as a requirement for high school graduation.
Iowa also established a voluntary Seal of Civics Excellence program for graduating students who demonstrate proficiency in civics. The law directs the Iowa Department of Education to establish requirements that include knowledge of American government and participation in civic and community activities.
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Comments
How many elected officials can?
Right. Now do political candidates.
AOC: “If we work our butts off to make sure that we take back all three chambers of Congress, uh, rather, all three chambers of government — the presidency, the Senate and the House…”
Uh, “Stinky Soros & Sons”, Reid Hoffman, and Neville Roy Singham?
“The state now requires students to pass a civics test based on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services naturalization civics test as a requirement for high school graduation.”
And that’s a low bar, depending on who’s running the government.
Back in the ’90s, my local newspaper printed samples of the questions that were asked on the naturalization test. One question was: “What is the most important idea expressed in the Declaration of Independence?”
My immediate answer was, “governments are instituted to secure personal rights and liberties, and any government that doesn’t should be discarded and a new one instituted.”
The “correct” answer was “all men are created equal.”
I’m sorry — I thought you asked about the Declaration of INDEPENDENCE. My bad!
It ought to be required to vote
Start each ballot with a simple capsule civics test and if they don’t get it right, their votes don’t count.
3 branches? Oh that’s easy – executive, legislative, and the media!