OKLAHOMA CITY -- Only one in four Oklahoma public high school students can name the first President of the United States, according to a survey released today.
The survey was commissioned by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs in observance of Constitution Day on Thursday.
Brandon Dutcher is with the conservative think tank and said the group wanted to find out how much civic knowledge Oklahoma high school students know.
The Oklahoma City-based think tank enlisted national research firm, Strategic Vision, to access students' basic civic knowledge.
"They're questions taken from the actual exam that you have to take to become a U.S. citizen," Dutcher said.
A thousand students were given 10 questions drawn from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services item bank. Candidates for U.S. citizenship must answer six questions correctly in order to become citizens.
About 92 percent of the people who take the citizenship test pass on their first try, according to immigration service data. However, Oklahoma students did not fare as well. Only about 3 percent of the students surveyed would have passed the citizenship test.
Dutcher said this is not just a problem in Oklahoma. He said Arizona had similar results, which left him concerned for the entire country.
"Jefferson later said that a nation can't expect to be ignorant and free," Dutcher said. "It points to a real serious problem. We're not going to remain ignorant and free."
Question
% of StudentsWho Answered Correctly
What is the supreme law of the land? 28%
What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution? 26
What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress? 27
How many justices are there on the Supreme Court? 10
Who wrote the Declaration of Independence? 14
What ocean is on the east coast of the United States? 61
What are the two major political parities in the United States? 43
We elect a U.S. senator for how many years?
11
Who was the first President of the United States? 23
Who is in charge of the executive branch? 29
See the answers to the test
More: Read the Full Report from OCPA
11 comments:
Dump in more money..... that always works...
Sounds pretty typical for a red state.
MD_Progressive
Eye-opener!
Great quiz for all to take.
Whewwwwwww, I would still pass but got 2 wrong.
It seems that today the Supreme Court is our supreme law of the land.
The question "Who was the first president of the united states" is tricky. The president under the articles of confederation or the constitution? We all know Washington but under the articles of confederation John Hanson was elected president in 1781. Washington was elected 1789.
I suspect if you stood outside the Salisbury Walmart and asked the same questions the results would be about the same.
lol i bet they think obama is the greatest though!lol!
gee... and Obama wants to talk to todays students about the importance on education. Whatcha think no Joe?
Make no mistake this is not on accident. I would be willing to bet that most Americans don't know some of this. It works to the politicians advantage if Americans don't know how government works.
I am college edubacted, and follow politics a lot closer than most people; and there is plenty I totally do not understand/know about how this Country is being run.
This is not a left or right thing, the education system in this Country mirrors the political situation...Incompetent bureaucracy.
9:34
I expect if you ask the same questions in the D.C. schools and Baltimore schools or any other city blue state schools the percentage of correct answers would drop by half.
Thats kinda funny in my eyes, my husband is from OK and the public school he graduated from had exactly 20 students in each grade. If every school had that kind of teacher/student ratio, imagine what education would be like. And for the record, 9 of 10 students around here wouldn't be able to answer those questions either!!!
Charity - Salisbury,MD
Oklahoma is one of only two States that voted more Republican last year than the rest of the country. I'm not surprised that they are so uninformed. There is direct correlation between education and voting Democratic. The more educated you are, the more likely you will vote Democratic. This only reinforces that theory.
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