Foundling Fathers

Yesterday was Constitution Day, when we’re supposed to celebrate a document that, by establishing a republic built on the consent of the governed, with a brilliant and delicate balance of powers, revolutionized modern Western civilization. Didn’t know? Don’t care? Then you might not be concerned that in an Annenberg Public Policy Center survey released late last week, just a quarter of respondents could name all three branches of government.

You might not be bothered that the same survey revealed 53% of Americans incorrectly believe that undocumented people have no rights under the Constitution.

It might not trouble you that a third of Americans couldn’t name a single right guaranteed by the First Amendment; just 14% could name freedom of the press as one of those rights.

Such pervasive ignorance has real-world consequences in the people we elect — cough, cough — and the laws we allow those people to pass and implement in our name.

In some form or other, civics or social studies is taught in public schools in all 50 states. But standards vary widely. Here in New York, students must pass a Regents exam in U.S. history and government to graduate.

Today, schools across the country are celebrating Constitution Day. In some, students are even reciting the ringing preamble — a novel idea in an era when rote learning tends to be frowned upon.

Give it a try: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”