Disturbing Numbers

Yesterday I "taught out" of my semester's notes for my State and Local Government class; so, in order to fill the remaining time I used them as guinea pigs for an activity I'm adding this fall to my National Government classes. By August it would seem that immigration reform will most likely be the "front burner" issue and I decided it would be a good idea to give the students a glimpse of the legal process to become a citizen that is being abused by illegal immigrants. One activity I had planned was to give the class some sample questions from the test required for gaining U.S. citizenship.

I went ahead and gave 20 of those questions to my 14 students in State and Local Government yesterday. Now, to be fair, not all of these students have taken National Government and we did not directly discuss many of these topics in State and Local Government as the U.S. Constitution and government only enters the class peripherally. Still some of the results were VERY disturbing. Below I'm going to list each question and beside the question provide the number of students in the class who answered the question correctly out of the 14 who completed the exercise.

1. What is the supreme law of the land? -  9 out of 14
2. The idea of self-government is in the first three words of the Constituion. What are these words? - 9 out of 14
3. What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution? -  12 out of 14
4. What is one right or freedom from the First Amendment? - 13 out of 14
5. What are two rights in the Declaration of Independence - 0 out of 14
6. Name one branch of the government. - 13 out of 14
7. Who is in charge of the Exeuctive Branch? - 7 out of 14
8. What are the two parts of the U. S. Congress? - 6 out of 14
9. How many U. S. Senators are there? - 3 out of 14
10. We elect a U.S. Representative for how many years? - 5 out of 14
11. In what month do we vote for President? - 8 out of 14
12. What are two Cabinet positions? - 6 out of 14
13. Who is the Chief Justice of the United States? - 2 out of 14
14. Who wrote the Declaration of Independence - 9 out of 14
15. There were 13 original states. Name three. - 10 out of 14
16. Who was the first President? - 13 out of 14
17. Name one war fought by the United States in the 1800s. 9 out of 14
18. Name one war fought by the United States in the 1900s - 14 out of 14
19. Name one American Indian tribe in the United States. 12 out of 14
20. Name one state that borders Canada. - 11 out of 14

Now I guess the one that disturbed me the most was question #5. To me, the Declaration of Independence is the single most  important document in our history. The phrases in question -- among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" -- defines what it means to be an American citizen. I'm a little unclear how from the nine students who knew that Jefferson was the principle author of the document, none knew those key words. That result along is causing me to change slightly how I teach the Declaration in American History. Those inalienable rights are the one thing I want to make sure my students recognize.

All-in-all, it was a sobering experience to see how little the students really know about our nation and a challenge to do a better job of teaching. (By the way, I didn't provide the answers in the blog -- sort of  tease to perhaps make some folks uncomfortable . . . . LOL!!!)