The Need for Teaching Civics:  Some of our students can Identify Snookie, but they do not know the name of the current Vice President or who won the Civil War…

Richard Dreyfus is under the impression that we need to start teaching civics again. What are the duties and obligations of citizens in understanding their government? Recently, a project was conducted at Texas Tech to see how much history and other facts that college students should know. Here is the clip from NPR at Texas Tech:

It would be convenient to lay off all this ignorance to Tech, unfortunately, there is evidence from all over the country. Here is a sampling.

CitizenshipTest in Philadelphia

Are you smarter than an American? Native-born citizens fail civics test

Dr. Walter Williams has observed that many people are graduating with fraudulent degrees. From the clips above, this might be the case. If you are not aware of Richard Dreyfus’s efforts to get the teaching of civics back into school, you may want to visit his web site. This is a noble effort; Dreyfus Initiative.

Dreyfus does an excellent job of explaining the need for civics relative to thought and the role of the citizen in this short video clip.  

For our students and others to know who Snookie is but cannot name the first President or the current Vice President, we may be in trouble. Dreyfus observed: “To teach our kids how to run our country, before they are called upon to run our country…if we don't, someone else will run our country.”