A Test Of Our National Intelligence Shows Decline

The findings of a Zogby public opinion poll of people who voted for Barack Obama taken right after the recent Presidential election illustrates several problems for America.

More than eighty five percent of those polled knew that Sarah Palin wore clothes that the Republican Party had spent $150,000 to buy. In addition, 94% of polled Obama voters knew Palin had a pregnant teenage daughter.

Meanwhile just 23% of these poll respondents knew that Barack Obama erroneously claimed to have campaigned in 57 American states and only 28% knew of Joe Biden's past problems with plagiarism.

The initial reaction to this Zogby public opinion poll is to blame the mainstream media for selected and biased reporting in the Presidential Election of 2008. It can also be fairly argued that Republican John McCain failed in getting his campaign message out. The result of the poll does highlight the issues that the mainstream media chose as a focus as well as the issues that were conveniently overlooked.

Some Republican partisans may say that the Zogby Poll results indicate that the supporters of Barack Obama lack intelligence. Since 53% of the American public voted for the President-Elect, that is a real hard argument to make. Also, the demographics of the poll show that eighty percent of those polls had gone to college or were college graduates.

However, there is more to be concerned about than media bias or party politics in the Zogby poll. The poll also found that about 50% of respondents did not know that the Democrat Party was in control of Congress before the recent Presidential election.

The percentage of people who could not correctly answer this basic civics question about current American government combined with the recent results of the civic-literacy survey conducted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) are most troubling indeed.

The shocking fact is that seventy one percent of Americans flunked the thirty three question ISI survey. Nearly eighteen hundred out of twenty five hundred randomly selected people flunked the exam and their average score was 49 out of one hundred. Just four percent scored an A or a B on the quiz. The percentage of people who could not correctly answer basic American civics questions on the test is astounding.

In the test, just 49 percent of rank-and-file Americans could identify the legislature, executive, and judiciary as our three branches of government. In addition, forty percent of college graduates have no idea that corporate profits equal revenues minus expenses while only 24 percent of college grads realize that the First Amendment forbids the establishment of an official U.S. religion.

The test showed that the164 self-identified elected officials know even less than laymen. They averaged a score of only 44% on the quiz. Among office holders, 30 percent did not know that the Declaration of Independence heralds “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The civics test did show the influence of popular television on our culture. Only 21 percent of respondents correctly identified Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address as the source of the words “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” However, 56 percent properly named Paula Abdul as a judge on “American Idol.”

Over the last several years, civics is an area that has been dropped and de-emphasized in many educational programs throughout the country. So, it should not be surprising that recent results show a dramatic decline in the basic understanding of the workings of American government.

Still, civics is a basic part of national intelligence in a free society. Poll and test results show that this intelligence is in decline. So, its time to renew a focus on civics in national education in the upcoming review and reform of "No Child Left Behind."

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