Americans Fail at Civics

It has been reported by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute that most college students fail miserably at Civics. They cannot recall basic data about what the Constitution says or what Lincoln and Douglas debated about; nor do they have any idea about what the New Deal meant or who created it. Smaller schools seem to do better than larger, yet even they tend to score poorly. Why?

Simply because fact is not seen as important in our schools these days. Never mind that facts are the building blocks of knowledge. Never mind that the ability to recall information easily and accurately is what makes us able to distinguish the good from the bad. Never mind that human thought itself is predicated upon what we do and do not know: we cannot act rationally if we cannot think rationally, and we cannot think rightly without a command of the facts.

Yet schools downplay rote knowledge. You can look up in a book, or google it on the Internet, if you really need to know what Lincoln said to Douglas. What's important is how you feel. What compassion do you have for your peers? How can you relate to others? What sense of social justice do you have?

Well, you cannot know real compassion, you cannot relate well to your fellows, you cannot have any sense of social propriety, if you don't know when, where, why, how, and who merits it. And you can only know that by knowing things and events and, yes, morals, the critical offshoot of correct thought.

We are trying to teach young kinds to be good minds without any guidelines. We are creating what C. S. Lewis called Men Without Chests: we atrophy proper sentiment by instilling in the young poor thought, or no thought at all, rather than showing youth good and clear thought supported by the facts.

When we do not support rote knowledge we support no true knowledge at all. Our schools do not believe we can know anything. It is no wonder so many of people fall for it.