Almost a Fourth of Americans Do Not Know When the U.S. Declared Independence - The Note: "American Fourth of July traditions are tightly woven into the fabric of U.S. society, but the history of the country’s independence seems to have slipped through the seams.
A Marist poll released Friday shows that only 58 percent of Americans know when the country declared independence. Nearly a fourth of respondents said they were unsure and sixteen percent said a date other than 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed.
Young people posted the most troubling scores with 41 percent of people ages 18 to 29 saying they were unsure when the Declaration of Independence was signed and 27 percent saying the wrong date.
One in four Americans do not even know which country the U.S. gained independence from. The correct answer, of course, is Great Britain, although 20 percent of respondents were unsure of that fact.�"
6 comments:
Most young people think the earth was formed the day they discovered the mall.
Last month (during the D-Day anniversary) they had on TV a WWII veteran being asked why we goes around the local High Schools educating students about The War. His answer - About 10 years ago he was introduced by a teacher in Atlanta as "a man who fought in World War Eleven."
The problem is that the HS kids aren't getting the correct information in their American History courses. I've recently looked through a HS American History textbook. It's shocking what educators are pushing down.
I was disturbed when the American history text we were using had the wrong quote for what Armstrong said when he stepped out on the Moon.
Hey, was it called Great Britain in 1776 - or just England?
It's astonishing the nonsense that gets taught. My husband has had an on-going dispute with our school board over the 7th grade American history curriculum which says that slavery was NOT a cause of the Civil War. Apparently, according to the class study guide, the causes of the Civil War were economic factors and states' rights.
Deb: let me correct you. The two main reasons that the South seceded from the Union were economic and social differences between the North and the South and States versus federal rights. As a root cause, expanded sympathy in the North began to grow for abolitionists and against slavery and slaveholders well after the war was on the way.
JTG in Detroit
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