As the nation prepares to celebrate Constitution Day on Sunday, an annual survey suggests most Americans don’t know enough about their political system to pass a citizenship test.
In an online survey of 1,482 adults conducted last month and released Thursday, the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center found just 40% of respondents knew that the First Amendment protects freedom of religion and only 28% recognized it guarantees freedom of the press.
“These results are disturbing, especially considering the current threats to our democratic institutions,” James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, told The Washington Times. “It’s hard for people to understand the nature and significance of those threats if they don’t understand the institutions themselves.”
Last year, the Annenberg poll found sharp declines in basic civics knowledge as partisan scandals dominated news about the federal government. This year saw even more scandals, pollsters said.
Annenberg noted that the latest survey came as former President Donald Trump faces four criminal indictments, the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down racial preferences in college admissions and congressional Republicans are discussing impeachment proceedings against President Biden, among other events.
Starting this year, the center has switched from a live telephone interview to a self-administered online poll, making it easier for participants to think about (or look up) their answers. Pollsters cited an increasingly low response rate to telephone surveys for the change.
The center said Thursday it could not fairly compare this year’s results to last year since online respondents generally have “higher knowledge levels than phone respondents.”
What’s “worrisome” is that 1 in 6 adults still could not name any of the three branches of the federal government — executive, judicial and legislative — with more time to think about the questions this year, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and director of the survey.
“Whether one prefers online to phone questions or not, the bottom line across our surveys remains the same — a concerning number cannot muster the knowledge needed to exercise their constitutional rights or make sense of the workings of our system of government,” Ms. Jamieson said.
Respondents also delivered a mixed performance when asked to name the other freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment: Seventy-seven percent could name freedom of speech, 33% could identify the right to assemble and only 9% knew about their right to petition the government.
Among survey respondents, those who took a high school civics class were more likely to know the correct answers, as in past years.
Wilfred McClay, an award-winning American historian at Hillsdale College, said the survey confirms the “massive and ongoing failure” of U.S. education to teach young people about their system of government.
“A prospective conqueror could hardly imagine doing a better job of rendering us ill-equipped to be … self-governing,” Mr. McClay told The Times. “The teaching of accurate and non-ideological American history is essential to citizens’ understanding of their institutions.”
Others downplayed the findings, pointing out that the annual study found “notable increases” in civics knowledge in 2020 and 2021.
“I’m sure that the survey [found] terrible levels of knowledge, but this has been true since the founding, and the U.S. has survived,” said Robert Weissberg, a retired University of Illinois professor who started teaching American politics in the 1960s.
“Our system does not depend on a well-informed citizenry,” he added. “If it did, we’d have vanished long ago.”
Some civil rights advocates say the survey leaves ample room for high schools and colleges to improve instruction.
“Americans’ limited knowledge of their First Amendment rights continues to be a weak spot,” said Jeremy C. Young of the free speech advocacy group PEN America. “That’s why it’s so important for colleges and universities to incorporate education on free expression principles into their curricula and student programming.”
“It’s an indictment of our high schools,” said Ronald J. Rychlak, a law professor and former associate law school dean at the University of Mississippi. “High school graduates certainly should understand how the Constitution works.”
Peter Wood, president of the conservative National Association of Scholars and a former associate provost at Boston University, said the survey results also show that the media has failed to educate people about the political process in a nonpartisan way.
“That leaves even the best informed people to approach the Constitution through a lens of hostility toward people they don’t like,” Mr. Wood told The Times. “Meanwhile, our schools are more focused on fighting climate change and systemic racism than on teaching what the Constitution says.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.