How bad are Americans when it comes to knowledge of their own history and system of government?  Well, going by a recent Newsweek poll, it’s not pretty.

They’re the sort of scores that drive high-school history teachers to drink. When NEWSWEEK recently asked 1,000 U.S. citizens to take America’s official citizenship test, 29 percent couldn’t name the vice president. Seventy-three percent couldn’t correctly say why we fought the Cold War. Forty-four percent were unable to define the Bill of Rights. And 6 percent couldn’t even circle Independence Day on a calendar.

And when it comes to international affairs, Americans fall far behind Europeans in depth of knowledge. No surprise there.  Unlike real news organizations like the BBC and CBC, American television news rarely reports on anything of international significance unless a 1000 or more locals (or at least 2 Americans) have died in an act of nature or unless the U.S. is waging a war in that country.  Seriously, if one got all their news from Fox, they’d be hard-pressed to name a country in the world other than the United States, Iraq and Afghanistan.  OK, and Japan.  The same can be said of MSNBC, CNN and the major networks. 

In the 17th century, Galileo did his best to enlighten the masses by informing them that Earth was not the center of the universe. If he was around today, he’d be trying to tell Americans that the U.S. is not the center of the universe. I have no doubt that he’d be treated no differently now for his heretic beliefs than he was by the Catholic Church 400 years ago. Getting the truth out is always a difficult matter when up against a lifetime of ignorance.

Newsweek gives a number of reasons as to why Americans do so poorly on a basic U.S. citizenship’s test – complexity of the American political system, “one of the highest levels of income inequality in the developed world” and the decentralized U.S. school system top the list. If poverty does indeed breed ignorance than one has every reason they need to be concerned by the widening gap between rich and poor. It should be pointed out that ignorance in turn breeds poverty which is demonstrated by the latest moves to reduce spending by slashing education budgets.

There is a real cause for concern in all of this which has serious implications for all Americans.

For more than two centuries, Americans have gotten away with not knowing much about the world around them. But times have changed—and they’ve changed in ways that make civic ignorance a big problem going forward. While isolationism is fine in an isolated society, we can no longer afford to mind our own business. What happens in China and India (or at a Japanese nuclear plant) affects the autoworker in Detroit; what happens in the statehouse and the White House affects the competition in China and India. Before the Internet, brawn was enough; now the information economy demands brains instead.

So is all lost?  No, of course it’s not. As Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker notes:

“The problem is ignorance, not stupidity. We suffer from a lack of information rather than a lack of ability.”

There’s hope…but someone better get things moving in the right direction. Burying one’s head in the sand or living in denial won’t improve the situation. And while this phenomena does cross party lines, I don’t have to tell you which of the two is battling on the side of ignorance. As a matter of fact, their success is dependent on Americans being misinformed. Bill Maher explains.
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You can take the test yourself here.
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