Ignorance is a B.A.
Americans, including elected officials, earn a failing grade when tested on American history and economics.
The recently-released third Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) Report on Civic Literacy suggests there is an epidemic of historical, political and economic ignorance in America and that colleges ought to be the main part of the cure.
“Fewer than half of all Americans can name all three branches of government, a minimal requirement for understanding America’s constitutional system,” reads the report referring to its test of civic literacy in which liberals score 49%, conservatives 48%, and Republicans earning 52% over the Democrats’ 45%.
Americans also agree that colleges should teach the country’s heritage. For example, the report argues that only 24% of college graduates know that the First Amendment prohibits establishing an official religion of the United States.
Seventy-three percent of respondents in the West, 69% in the Mid West, 74% in the Northeast, and 74% in the South agree that colleges should take this position. 74% of conservatives also agree versus 71% of liberals.
“Americans remain divided over many issues, but on one they have forged a deep consensus. A large majority agrees that colleges should prepare citizen leaders by teaching America’s history, key texts and institutions,” the report says.
But the report is also highly critical toward college education, adding that it adds little to civic knowledge.
It says: “Earning a college degree does little to increase knowledge of America’s history, key texts, and institutions. The average score among those who ended their formal education with a bachelor’s degree is 57%, or an F. That is only 13 percentage points higher than the average score among those who ended their formal education with a high school diploma.”
The report has more news: television, including TV news, dumbs America down.
College graduates, the report says, don’t know about America.
“By the time an American earns a bachelor’s degree, it is highly unlikely that he or she will have a solid command of the founding and the Civil War eras, core constitutional principles, and market economics. Pre-college education tends to increase knowledge of themes from twentieth-century American history at the expense of economics and pre-twentieth-century themes that tend to be the foundation of much subsequent political discourse,” it says, adding that colleges begin to reverse this trend, but not enough to close significant gaps in these crucial categories of civic knowledge.
Only 54% of respondents, it says, could correctly identify a basic description of the free enterprise system, in which all Americans participate.
Additionally, the report argues that elected officials typically have less civic knowledge than the general public, on average scoring 44%— five percentage points lower than non-officeholders.
Thirty percent of elected officials, the report says, do not know that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are the inalienable rights referred to in the Declaration of Independence.
“ISI calls on administrators, trustees, donors, faculty, parents, and elected officials to re-evaluate curricula and standards of accountability so that colleges can better prepare their graduates for the responsibilities of informed citizenship,” the report says in conclusion, lamenting that after all the time, effort and money spent on college, students emerge no better off in understanding the fundamental features of American self-government.
It also asks:
• Do colleges require courses in American history, politics, economics, and other core areas?
• Do colleges assess the civic or overall learning of their graduates?
• Do elected officials link college appropriations to real measures of civic or overall learning?
• Do parents make college selection choices based upon a school’s actual academic performance?
Jesse Masai is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
Jesse Masai
