According to retired Justice Sandra Day O’Conner, the growing ignorance of the up coming generations on how our government operates will cause the problems with government to escalate in the future.
She added in her 12-minute speech that surveys have shown fewer teenagers can identify the three branches of government than can name the Three Stooges.
I completely agree that civics should be required at the high school level, and I agree with Bitter that if young people aren’t aware of their rights, how will they know if their rights are being infringed?
Of course, there are a lot of problems with the way our schools are run right now – it seems like somewhere the emphasis shifted away from actually educating children and turned to producing good little citizens. I know full grown adults, products of the public school system in several different states who do not have even a basic grasp of how our government works, or a passing understanding of economics.
The problem is that to actually bring about a change to the education system, there must be a cultural shift amongst our alleged educators. Frankly, I don’t think the odds of entrenched academia changing are too good.
(H/T Bitter)
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