During many political arguments, my proposed solutions to The Big Problems are often extremely long-term solutions, predicated on the notion that education can be the cornerstone of a civilization–if it takes as its goal the production of citizens trained in critical thinking, rather than the production of employable units. I am frequently mocked for my view of education as a potential panacea, particularly by those people actually involved in secondary and post-secondary pedagogy.
However, I don’t think anyone can look at the results of this recent study, reported in the Houston Chronicle and say that a serious education effort is not required:
when told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes “too far” in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.
There are lots of other stories covering this study around the ‘net, with mostly the same information. Google it up if you want to find some. For example, here’s a quote from the piece in USAToday:
The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get “government approval” of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.
I guess the good news is that even such weak-ass, predigested examples of journalism as USA Today can write a piece about this that expresses shock.
