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Thursday, April 30th, 2015

Most U.S. Middle-School Kids Don’t Know How Government Works

Author:     Laura Colby
Source:     Bloomberg Business
Publication Date:     9:01 PM PDT April 28, 2015
 Link: Most U.S. Middle-School Kids Don’t Know How Government Works
Stephan:   How long can a democracy endure when its children don't even know what a democracy is. I agree with Justice Sandra Day O Connor when she says, the results are “truly frightening, and demonstrate that we must put the same emphasis on these subjects that we are putting on math and science.” The only additional comment I would make is that if we are emphasizing science and math, we are doing a dreadful job of it. American school children rank very low in the developed world on either science or math.
Eighth grade students from Oyster-Adams Bilingual School learn auto mechanics in Washington D.C.

Eighth grade students from Oyster-Adams Bilingual School learn auto mechanics in Washington D.C.

More than half of U.S. eighth-graders say Americans believe the U.S. government should guarantee them a job when they grow up.

That’s one of the findings of a federal test of children’s knowledge of history, civics and geography. Only 32 percent correctly answered the question about a belief shared by most people in the U.S. The right response: the government should be a democracy. Eleven percent said citizens favored a single political party and 6 percent, an official religion.

The results of the 2014 test, called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, were released Wednesday as Congress considers replacing the federal testing law known as No Child Left Behind, which President Barack Obama and others blame for promoting too tight a focus on math and reading at the expense of other subjects.

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, founder of civics education nonprofit, iCivics, said the […]

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