ACTA's Must-Reads

I'm not surprised by this set of survey results, nor do I suspect you'd get substantially different results in other eras. Civics classes are bound by an awkward inconsistency much like sex education: "We have to tell you this because you're going to need this information someday and because we suppose it's our job, but DON'T USE IT YET!!!"

The other answer would be Richard Hofstadter's argument that there is a thread of anti-intellectual, intolerant culture running through U.S. history (see his Age of Reform and Anti-Intellectualism in American Life).

Sherman's ideas sound right to me. I also think that students' knowledge of the Bill of Rights is about as good as their knowledge of any other set of school facts. So long as public schools teach students behavioristically to memorize facts and regurgitate them for tests, these schools won't be promoting meaningful learning, whether about the First Amendment or about the concept of the mole. If every public school student was required to write a research paper on the Bill of Rights, I think you'd find much better results. Research-based, inquiry learning tends to achieve long-term results in rentention and transfer of knowledge.

It's impossible to be shocked that faculty and students are completely ignorant of the First Amendment: For decades now, faculty have been openly hostile to free expression of ideas that displease them, and they have labored hard to squelch any such expression. Further, they have had extraordinary success, which has only recently been contested through the courts and public opinion.

How can anyone rationally expect such open hostility to result in anything other than complete disregard for principles that offend the "education" establishment, from elementary through the graduate school?

Having been a FIRE network attorney for years, I can personally attest to the fact that there is no more oppressive environment with respect to the free circulation of ideas and debate than academic settings. Nor is this a recent development. Historically, totalitarian systems have always first taken root in the schools, where people who mistake themselves for the guiding lights of society do their damndest to remake it according to self-interested profit and personal conceit.

One should recall that some responses may be a function of how each question was asked and the order in which questions were asked rather than being indicative of the actual sentiments of the respondents. With that in mind, there are some alternative interpretations that are less alarming. One might also note that the function of government is to persue justice and the common good. Sometimes that is congruent with expressive individualism, and sometimes it is not.

A 2005 John S. and James L. Knight Foundation survey of 100,000 high school students, nearly 8,000 high school teachers, and more than 500 administrators at 544 high schools across the United States found that 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;

About twenty years ago, I saw published some poll results the burden of which was that 3/4ths of the public admitted they do not follow public affairs. One cannot help but note a similar proportion described above. It may be that attention to public affairs is a minority taste of a consistent size.

75 percent erroneously think flag burning is illegal;

They are in error, but why might they be in error? When I was in grade school, there were certain folk rules surrounding the handling of the school's flag, assignment to which tasks was not regarded as a chore: don't let it touch the ground and fold it just so. That may be the background with which they consider the possibility that statutory law prohibits certain things (as few people actually read the U.S. Code). Please note also, the appellate judiciary may think there are such things as "speech acts", but the rest of us have not necessarily been addled in this fashion. If you understand "freedom of speech" or "freedom of the press" to mean just what they say, you do not include petty acts of arson or desecrating Mr. Justice Brennan's grave.

half believe the government can censor the Internet;

Do you think that those who answered this in the affirmative might have in mind the prosecutions for possession of child pornography and arrangement of liaisons with the underaged you read about from time to time?

and more than one-third think that the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.

Again, the religion clauses have been interpreted in such a way that local communities have been stripped of the autonomy to conduct public celebrations and tributes and must be broken to the will of the appellate judiciary acting at the behest of the public interest bar and their straw plaintiffs, not to mention vocational nuisances like Michael Newdow. The speech and press clauses have been interpreted in such a way as to remove the discretion of local communities in regulating the traffic in smut. The press clause has been interpreted in such a way as to allow newspapermen et al. to slander and libel an amorphous class of 'public figures' at will. The proliferation of 'rights' can threaten other goods (and, on occasion, individual liberty as well). I bet there are people distressed at this.

Nearly half think newspapers need governmental approval of stories,

Military censors have been used in past wars and civil servants can theoretically be prosecuted for disseminating state secrets. The confusion is understandable in some circumstances.

nearly four in ten do not know if they take the First Amendment for granted, and one in four does not know if people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions.

And both sets are one might wager composed of people who have not registered to vote.

Knight Foundation president and CEO Hodding Carter III says, "The results are not only disturbing; they are dangerous. Ignorance about the basics of this free society is a danger to our nation's future."

Is this ignorance prevalent among the political elites, and is it getting worse among the general public?

The First Amendment Center's "State of the First Amendment 2005" survey found that few Americans can name any of the five specific rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, only 58 percent believe newspapers should be allowed to freely criticize the military,

Doesn't sound good.

and 67 percent believe public school students should not be allowed to wear T-shirts that others might find offensive,

Of course they don't. Public school students are minors and 'audible' clothing can be a breach of manners injurious to the capacity of the school to perform its assigned mission.

50 percent believe people should not be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to religious groups, and 43 percent believe people should not be allowed to say things in public that are offensive to racial groups.

Sounds bad, inasmuch as 'offensive' can be defined quite elastically. What percentages do you suppose obtain among college administrators?

That aside, it sounds to some extent like a manifestation in the public sphere of the sort of dysfunctional niceness which hobbles the governance of private associations and allows them to be manipulated by the obnoxious and the devious. Can we say it results from an anti-libertarian sentiment or might it also arise from the notion that conflict is somehow illegitimate rather than an ordinary part of life among fallible human beings?

the survey also found that one in ten Wisconsin adults thinks people should be punished for protesting on public property

If the protestors are not licensed and privileged to be there and are obstructing the business of people who have to use that property, this is understandable. Courts do recognize that the state has the discretion to set some time-and-place regulations on the exercise of the right to assemble, & c.

...or for criticizing the government during wartime,

Does not sound good. Do you suppose they distrust journalists?

one in four thinks the government should censor journalists,

What if the journalists are trading in legitimate state secrets to persue a political vendetta or just to pleasure themselves? What if journalists are trading in smut?

nearly half think the government should violate religious freedom in the fight on terrorism,

What is meant by 'religious freedom' in this context? That aside, general laws of neutral applicability are bound to crash into the practices of some sect, whether those practices have been adopted with sincere intent or not. In a working political society, sombody's metaphysical claims will get more respect than somebody else's as a matter of public policy. Polygamy is unlawful and sedition is unlawful and if that cramps the style of some of our more truculent local imams, many people say 'tough'. Why should they not?

six in ten think people should be punished for burning the flag in political protest, and eight in ten think schools should punish offensive speech.

I certainly hope the vice-principal boxes the ears of the kid who comes to school with a 'Surf Co-ed Naked' T-shirt. That is what he is paid to do.

Finally, and most telling, the 2003 Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) surveys found that "college and university students are woefully ignorant about freedom of speech and freedom of religion," that "administrators who govern student life on campus fared no better," and that "freedom of speech and freedom of religion are undergoing a frightening and powerful assault." For example, one out of every four undergraduates is unable to mention any freedoms protected by the First Amendment, and one in four administrators believes that they have the legal right to prohibit a student religous group from actively trying to convert students to its religion.

Your tuition dollars at work.

Is there anyone out there who would dispute the claim that American schools are failing their students in this regard, and that this poses a clear and present danger to the freedom upon which this country is founded? As the saying goes, a nation that does not educate in freedom is not going to be free for long.

Politics is the work of a self-selected professional sector whose members compete with eachother. Electioneering and free deliberation of public issues are the matrix in which they operate. The assumption appears to be that the injustices and stupidities of the common life are more circumscribed when the political elites operate with reference to the social and psychological dynamics of a broad electorate rather than that of a collection of courtesans or of the officer corps. The question of what percentage of that electorate needs be informed for the system to work as desired is an empirical one. The answer cannot be assumed.