Frightening results of Constitution Day survey indicate vast majority of students have little understanding of political system
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Friday, Sept 18, 2009
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
-Thomas Jefferson
A Constitution Day survey commissioned by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA) has found that the vast majority of high school students do not know that the Constitution represents the supreme law of the United States.
When asked the question What is the supreme law of the land? only 28% of public high school students in Oklahoma answered correctly.
In addition, over 75% were unable to identify the first president of the United States as George Washington, with 10% believing it was either George W. Bush or Barack Obama.
Around 75% were also unable to identify the name of the first ten amendments to the Constitution, with small percentages answer “The New Deal” and “The Ten Commandments”.
Alarmingly, just 14% were able to correctly state that the author of the Declaration of Independence was Thomas Jefferson. While 34% said they didn’t know, 7% thought that Barack Obama wrote it and 2% frighteningly believed that it had been drawn up by Michael Jackson.
11% of the students thought that the two major political parties in the U.S. were the Republicans and the Communists.
The questions, posed by national research firm, Strategic Vision, are taken from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services exam, the test that all candidates to become U.S. citizens must take.
As noted by the OCPA in their write up of the survey results, while around 92% of the people who take the citizenship test pass on their first attempt, only 2.8% of the students surveyed would have passed the citizenship test.
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Initially that is a bad statistic, but actually its more a reflection of reality. The reality being, our elections are fixed, the spying on civilians act (patriot) eliminates much of our bill of rights, and of course the dollars that own our "elected seats" in washington care too little for the wishes of the people. Add to that the media, the greatest influential entity of all time which dominates our psyches and was not present in jeffersonian times, and well, maybe the constitution is not what it used to be, not as vital a part of our existance,, sadly. Maybe the stats are reflecting that somewhat.
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