September 18, 2022
Fewer than half of Americans can name the three branches of their government
By Eric Utter
The most recent Annenberg Public Policy Center annual Constitution Day Civics Survey found that fewer than half of Americans can name all three branches of government — Executive, Legislative, and Judicial — a drop-off of 9 percentage points from just one year ago. (This is likely because a larger percentage of Americans attend "institutions of higher learning" than ever before. I'm not joking.) At this rate, no one will be able to achieve this remarkable feat by 2028. This is doubly sad when one realizes that nearly every single child in the country possessed this fundamental knowledge by the age of 12 or 14 fifty years ago. And 100 years ago. And 150 years ago. Whether they went to school in a large city or in a one-room schoolhouse on a Midwestern prairie.
Perhaps even more mind-boggling, roughly a quarter of Americans surveyed could not name a single branch of the federal government.
Perhaps even more disturbing, the survey showed an increase in the number of respondents who were unable to name any of the five freedoms guaranteed under the First Amendment to the Constitution. (Freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and to petition the government.) Just over one quarter of respondents were at a loss to name even one First Amendment freedom. In the previous survey, conducted in 2021, 56 percent of respondents identified freedom of religion, compared to only 24 percent in 2022. In 2021, half of the respondents noted freedom of the press, as opposed to only 20 percent in 2022.
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https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/09/fewer_than_half_of_americans_can_name_the_three_branches_of_their_government.html
