RUTHFULLY YOURS

Thomas Jefferson, in an 1816 letter to a member of the Virginia General Assembly, made this observation: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” He wrote this passage to highlight the need for a system of primary schools in the Old Dominion. Eventually, the Commonwealth did establish a public school system, though Jefferson didn’t live to see it. That is just as well, perhaps. He would certainly be horrified by the ignorance of the people who attend and receive diplomas from our public schools.

During recent years, numerous studies have found that most Americans don’t know enough about the nation’s history and Constitution to pass the U.S. Citizenship Test. A particularly thorough 50-state survey of 41,000 Americans was published by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in 2019. Nationally, only 4 in 10 passed. In only one state, Vermont, was a majority (53 percent) able to earn a passing grade for U.S. history. This dismal state of affairs was clearly exacerbated by the ill-conceived school shutdowns that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the low 2023 ACT test scores demonstrate.

But the problem predates the pandemic, which arrived on our shores a year after the foundation’s survey was conducted. The real explanation can be derived by breaking out the scores by age group: In the 65+ group, 76 percent passed. Only 51 percent of the 45 to 64 group passed. In the under 45 group, a mere 27 percent passed. This suggests that history instruction has been neglected in public schools for decades. As Timothy S. Goeglein explains in his book, Toward a More Perfect Union: The Moral and Cultural Case for Teaching the Great American Story, this neglect of history in public schools comes at a high price:

When there is no historical context to draw upon, no shared history, and no understanding of how government works, it becomes seed to sow division and discord in hearts and minds. When people are not equipped to refute an argument and lack the critical thinking skills to see beyond the rhetoric, they tend to accept it at face value. They become easy prey for demagogues — from the Left and the Right alike. They become tools to be exploited for a certain agenda.

There is ample evidence that we have already reached this point. Much of the electorate still accepts President Biden’s ridiculous claim that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” Likewise, millions of voters have never questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’ absurd comparison of the Capitol riot to the Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks. Even worse, many Americans are so ill-equipped to differentiate between political rhetoric and reality that they took to the streets last week to proclaim their solidarity with the perpetrators of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Ironically, a majority of Americans don’t have the slightest idea why they have the right to participate in such public demonstrations and openly express their opinions — no matter how deplorable. A recent survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, on behalf of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), asked 1,140 individuals if they could name any of the specific rights protected by the First Amendment. The findings betray an alarming level of ignorance among most Americans about the amendment itself and the five individual rights it guarantees.

Almost a third of Americans could not name a single enumerated right protected by the First Amendment and another 40% could name only one — usually freedom of speech. Among Americans who named one or more enumerated rights, roughly two-thirds (65%) named freedom of speech, about a quarter (26%) named freedom of religion, 20% named the right to assemble, 15% named freedom of the press, and 8% named the right to petition.

This level of ignorance is obviously one of the primary reasons so many Americans surrendered several of these five protections during the pandemic. Many of the so-called mitigation measures imposed by federal, state, and local officials pursuant to COVID-19 violated one or more of their First Amendment rights. Yet millions acquiesced in the shuttering of churches, limits on freedom of the press, and restrictions on their right to assemble. Combined with government mandates and shutdowns, the public’s ignorance of their rights did long term harm to the nation’s public health and its economy. (READ MORE: America Isn’t Dead Yet)

Moreover, the ignorance persists. According to a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, “Just over half of Americans (55%) support the U.S. government taking steps to restrict false information online, even if it limits people from freely publishing or accessing information.” If this isn’t terrifying enough, this percentage has been steadily increasing. In 2018, only 39 percent supported censorship of “false information.” The Pew survey doesn’t ask its respondents who would decide what constitutes false information. The answer is, of course, the government. Which brings us back to the Sage of Monticello.

In the letter quoted in the first paragraph, Jefferson goes on to write the following: “The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents.” He well understood that all governments tend toward tyranny and that the only defense against despotism is historically literate Americans who understand and are willing to demand their rights under the Constitution. The people who control our government and our public school system aren’t going to give us that unless we insist. That means we must get off our collective posteriors and do the work.