Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayer has been touring the country promoting civic awareness and education. She’s been to 38 states so far, and she has said, “No one is born a citizen. You have to be taught what that means.”
The picture is bleak. Almost a third of Americans cannot name a single branch of government. Almost 40% cannot cite a right guaranteed by the First Amendment, although I’ll bet almost all of them know what is in the Second.
At a meeting in Jim Thorpe last Tuesday I learned that the Jim Thorpe School District no longer teaches government or civics. The emphasis is on STEM–science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. We are turning out graduates who are proficient in science but know very little about the responsibilities of citizenship.
Perhaps the students themselves can demand more courses in government. Our country obviously is in need of that.
I found the statistics and the Sotomayor quote in Timothy Egan, “Actually, You Can Fix Stupid, New York Times, (March 31, 2018), p. A21.
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