- A Crisis in Civic Education.
It'll be worth a look in class.
Here are bullet points from the study:
• Only 20.6% of respondents could identify James Madison as the Father of the Constitution. More than 60% thought the answer was Thomas Jefferson—despite the fact that Jefferson, as U.S. ambassador to France, was not present during the Constitutional Convention.
• College graduates performed little better: Only 28.4% named Madison, and 59.2% chose Jefferson.
• How do Americans amend the Constitution? More than half of college graduates didn’t know. Almost 60% of college graduates failed to identify correctly a requirement for ratifying a constitutional amendment.
• We live in a dangerous world—but almost 40% of college graduates didn’t know that Congress has the power to declare war.
• College graduates were even confused about the term lengths of members of Congress. Almost half could not recognize that senators are elected to six year terms and representatives are elected to two-year terms.
• Less than half of college graduates knew that presidential impeachments are tried before the U.S. Senate.
• And 9.6% of college graduates marked that Judith Sheindlin—“Judge Judy”—was on the Supreme Court!
