I had the pleasure of attending the release event for the Intercollegiate Studies Institutes’s new report on civic literacy yesterday. The report, Our Fading Heritage: Americans Fail a Basic Test on Their History and Institutions, reveals some disconcerting results.
In short, the answer to “How much do Americans know about basic American history?” is “not very much.” Of the 2,500 randomly selected Americans to take ISI’s civic literacy quiz, 1,700 people failed, with the average score of 49%, aka a big fat “F.” Elected officials scored even lower than the general public with an average score of 44%.
Check out the study here.
