NO. NEXT QUESTION? Is free speech just for nice speech? Students (and adults) need to know civics.
Less than half of Americans can name most of the rights protected under the First Amendment, according to a May survey by Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center. Freedom of speech — which includes speech that some might consider misinformation or hate speech — is the best known at 74 percent; freedom of religion is second at 39 percent.
Schools need to get back to teaching civics, argues the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute for American Democracy in a new report.
Beginning in the 1960s, as “the Vietnam War and then the Watergate scandal eroded the public’s faith in government,” schools moved away from civics education as a way to assimilate a “nation of immigrants” to a common culture, the report says. Critics saw civic education “as a form of cultural imperialism” that ignored students’ diversity.
Instead of protecting diversity, schools fostered ignorance and intellectual conformity. Which, if it wasn’t the initial goal, that’s what it quickly became.