Is it true that bad news comes in clumps? (If you’ve got clumps, you’ve got more serious trouble than we can help with!) It does seem as though this might just be Bad News Week. Certainly yesterday’s post set the mood to “gray”!
Click on this link — this one here — only if you can absorb yet more disappointment with this mean old world!
(If you were to click there, you’d connect to a press release announcing the Third Intercollegiate Studies Institute Report on Civic Literacy. Here’s the title: NEW STUDY FINDS AMERICANS, INCLUDING ELECTED OFFICIALS, EARN A FAILING GRADE WHEN TESTED ON AMERICAN HISTORY AND ECONOMICS. It’s all in caps, the online equivalent of shouting, just to emphasize the terrible seriousness of this problem.)
The nutshell:
“People may be listening to television experts talk about economic bailouts and the platforms of political candidates, but they apparently have little idea what our basic economic and political institutions are,” observes Dr. Richard Brake, ISI’s Director of University Stewardship. “Our study raises significant questions about whether citizens who voted in this year’s landmark presidential election really understand how our system of representative democracy works.”
For example, Brake points out that less than half of all Americans can name all three branches of government. And only 21 percent know the phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people” comes from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which President-elect Barack Obama cited in his acceptance speech on Election night.
The “Our Fading Heritage” website is here.
For a little relief — we hope — take the (33-question) quiz yourself, here.