We are Jeopardizing Our Own Democracy

"Americans Fail The Test Of Civic Literacy" screamed the headline of a 2008 report from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. "It can truly be said we are suffering from an epidemic of civic ignorance," sums up Lt. General Josiah Bunting III, chairman of the group's National Civic Literacy Board. ISI is a conservative-leaning organization, but their study is comprehensive and objective. Regardless, the results are the same whether the source leans left, right, or otherwise.

Over the last ten years or so, numerous research studies and polls have produced very similar data about what Americans know about how government works, about the big issues of our time and the policies that address them, about where politicians stand on those issues and policies, and the historical knowledge needed to make wise judgments about these things. The results serve as indelible testimony to the depth of the civic and political literacy problem America faces. In 2005, the Knight Foundation commissioned one of the largest studies -- a two-year, million-dollar research project.

Summing up the results, then president Hodding Carter III said: "These results are not only disturbing; they are dangerous." "Americans Fail the Test of Civic Literacy" screamed the headline of a 2008 report from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. "It can truly be said we are suffering from an epidemic of civic ignorance," sums up Lt. General Josiah Bunting III, chairman of the group's National Civic Literacy Board. ISI is a conservative-leaning organization, but their study is comprehensive and objective. Regardless, the results are the same whether the source leans left, right, or otherwise.

-50% feel newspapers should not be allowed to publish stories without government approval

-only 35% know that Congress can override a presidential veto

-almost half think the president has the authority to suspend the U.S. Constitution

-35% feel the First Amendment goes too far. An additional 21% are unsure

-only a bare majority can name even one basic purpose of the Constitution

-64% of Americans can't name the three branches of government, or describe what they do

According to the Harvard Political Review's article, Civic Illiteracy in America (May 25, 2017):

“There is no easy solution to the civic illiteracy our country faces, but it is a problem worth solving. The costs of an uninformed public are simply too great for us not to address the current deficits in civic knowledge.”

“Thomas Jefferson wrote that “wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government,” implying that our democratic system rests on the assumption that citizens are civically literate. If we are to believe Jefferson, surveys of Americans’ civic knowledge indicate that “the people” currently cannot be trusted to govern.”