An organization called the American Revolution Center has released a study showing how little most Americans know about US history.
Now, one of these “wow, we’re dumb” reports pops up at least every six months or so and really…having to do a study to prove that most Americans are woefully ignorant of basic historical facts is right down there on the “well, duh” scale with things like “A study to show Wisconsin people’s preference for cheese over tofu” and directed research definitively linking “sex” and “pregnancy.”
Nevertheless, since I spend a fair amount of time on this space mocking the level of historical understanding by the Chinese leadership, I thought it would be fair to share a few of the gems from this particular report:
In spite of pledging allegiance to “the republic for which it stands,” equal numbers of American adults mistakenly believe the Constitution established a government of direct democracy, rather than a democratic republic. (While this basic fact is included on the naturalization exam for immigrants to qualify for U.S. citizenship, more than half of the Americans polled do not know it.) More than 50 percent of Americans wrongly attributed the quote, “From each according to his