Academic Survey Finds 35 Percent of Americans Can’t Name All Three Branches of Government

The University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center recently conducted a survey that found 35% of Americans can’t name the three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial.

This is an amazing indictment of our education system, but it also raises questions about our national discourse.

For instance, virtually everyone has an opinion about politics, and many people these days seem to think that they are experts in the topic. How is that possible when a third of Americans lack basic civics knowledge?

Campus Reform reports:

35% of Americans cannot name all three branches of government: SURVEY

A new survey found significant gaps in Americans’ basic civic knowledge, including that more than one-third of U.S. adults cannot name all three branches of government.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center found that just 65 percent of respondents correctly named the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The survey, conducted Aug. 6-9, included a nationally representative sample of 1,034 U.S. adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

The survey also examined Americans’ ability to identify the rights protected by the First Amendment.

Seventy-three percent of respondents named freedom of speech as a right protected under the First Amendment, while only 43 percent named freedom of religion, 31 percent named freedom of assembly, 29 percent named freedom of the press, and just 12 percent named the right to petition the government.

Only 9 percent could name all five protections, while 24 percent could not name a single one. Moreover, 25 percent of respondents mistakenly said the right to bear arms, protected under the Second Amendment, is a First Amendment right.

“Ignorance is costly. You can’t protect and cherish rights that you don’t know you have,” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director emerita of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, said.

Maybe we should conduct this same survey with members of Congress.

Does anyone believe that every member would pass the test?