Interesting stuff:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/01/31/students.amendment.ap/index.html
Hey. I’m an American student. What’s the First Amendment?
Sad, but not surprising. The US Constitution and Bill of Rights were barely mentioned when I was in grade school and high school in the 1970’s and early 1980’s. (And my speech was only free if my parents didn’t find out what I said at school. 
)
All too often, history is taught as a date memorization exercise; the tests are easier to grade that way. That certainly made me apathetic about the subject. I didn’t develop an interest in history until I was in my 30’s.
John
Bill of what???
Sadly, they won’t know what they got till its gone. It’s not just the U.S. here in Canada if the same study was taken, I suspect that the same kind of results will be found.
MarkB
There was a report on the radio the other morning that was just about as disturbing. A school in a neighboring county has decided not to teach social studies or health or art or music or anything else that is not the standardized tests they have to take. Some kids won’t even know what the amendments are!!
On the other hand, today when our geography teacher was asking us what we would do if the draft were reestablished, everyone really considered it long and hard. Some teachers do still teach students not just the facts, but also how to think about them, and some students still do understand the world very well for their age.
Bill Gates, right?
You know I wouldn’t be worried if students couldn’t give us the First Amendment of the Canadian Constitution. 
Geez, I’m only a couple of years older than you, and we spent half a year on it in junior high.
I’m not surprised by this; I think there are numerous causes. For one thing, knowledge of the US Constitution isn’t tested in those international tests that the policymakers are so taken with.
Let me clarify somethin’ I meant the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms not the U.S. First Amendment, if a comparative study was taken.
Thanks for pointing that out
MarkB
From the article:
The study suggests that students embrace First Amendment freedoms if they are taught about them and given a chance to practice them, but schools don’t make the matter a priority.
Talk about sad…
Just messing with you. 
Besides which, how many Canadians (forget about school children) would pick up on that fact if you asked them what our First Amendment was? Canadians still try to plead the Fifth in court.
Plead the fifth?
You mean like Canadian Club, or Seagrams, or Crown Royal?
ditto. I was turned off History in School by the age of 13, but anyone who knows me now would say I knew a lot of History and found it fascinating. It all came after the age of 30.
I always liked history in spite of the classes.
But they can’t really teach anymore because they have to gear everything toward passing those standardized federal tests and it’s getting so a teacher can be dismissed for saying anything that someone might disagree with.
I used to fill in some gaps for my daughters when they’d tell me what they’d learned.
I somehow think that the schools are doing what they are designed to do. Mass-produce interchangeable widgets for corporations.
If you look at the “rights” children have in school, we are training them to be good little patriots. Papers please, locker inspections, step through the metal detector, see through backpacks only, sorry no excuses zero tolerance, please say the hail to the flag (skip the liberty and justice part though)…
Yes, we as a country are doing a great job. Why the students care about rules that do not apply to them? If anything the children of today are going to demand the life they know on the society that produced them. One thing that people need to figure out is that if you control the schools, you control the future.
If you think about the 4th amendment on unreasonable searches and I can think about many exceptions (mostly drug related) that are being made that would have been illegal when I was born. If any thing the students may be more on the ball than you think, realizing that our country says one thing and does the other, and despite our antiquated ideas of what the US should be, see it for what it is.
It’s not just kids. Every year there is a group that goes out to major fourth of july celebrations and asks people to sign a “petition.” The most common reason for refusal is that it is too unballanced and it gives people too much power over the government. If I recall (too lazy to dig it out), it was something like, only 15% of the people reconized the “petition” as the Bill of Rights.
Right, Gem.
When I first heard this story on the radio, my natural reaction was “Well, there are plenty of grown-ups who don’t think the Second Amendment is important, either.”
OH SNAP!!!
Seriously, that’s pretty damning. I saw a similar deal on the Man Show, where they set up a booth and asked women to sign a petition to end womens’ suffrage. A lot of them signed it.