Kids will say the darndest things

Posted on 01/31/2005 at 12:02 pm by Bob Cesca

The Knight Foundation (press release here) issued the results of a poll today regarding high school students and their views on civil liberties here. The two most scary results:

-Seventy-five percent erroneously think flag burning is illegal.

-More than a third think the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees. Nearly three-fourths of high school students either do not know how they feel about the First Amendment or admit they take it for granted. (emphasis added)

In order to graduate into the ninth grade, it should be a requirement to memorize the preamble to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (at least). Oh but wait! We don’t want our nation’s youth to have an understanding of their basic rights as Americans. That would arm them with the knowledge that they’re free to question their government. We can’t have that. Constitution — bah!

This entry was posted in Civil liberties and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.
  • Megamoze

    The survey also said that over 1/3 of the kids think that the newspapers should have to get government approval before running their articles. Looks like Bush and the Republicans are finally getting the America they’ve been dreaming of.

  • http://www.realitybasednation.com Bob Cesca

    I totally missed that. Oy. Now where’s my suitcase?

  • LactarTheBanned

    Well, while that is scary, I’d like to share a few things I remember from High School.1.) Most of the opposition for the first amendment in my school came from people wanting to ban “hate speech”.2.) A great many of us would put the mostdisturbing thing possible on the survey just because we resented our time being wasted. Theres a great “Zits” cartoon where the main character, a young high schooler, is doing a survey, and it goes something like this.Your parents are:MarriedDivorced+ Other ________and he checked other and wrote “cousins”3.) Has anybody seen the survey in question? You can make people say just about anything you want on a survey. Somehow I dont think The Knight Foundation is bias free, as no group who cares about the result ever is.