World Journal of Social Science
A Crisis in Civic Conscience in the United States? Knowledge and Understanding of the U.S. Bill of Rights among a Group of Undergraduate Students Citizens of the United States
Abstract
Three groups of undergraduate student citizens of the United States at a regional public university were surveyed regarding their knowledge of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States. Additionally, the findings of a focus group discussion of Honors students regarding this same topic are presented and discussed. A fifteen-statement questionnaire was administered to 66 First Year Experience (FYE) undergraduate students, 50 senior students, and nine Honors students. Ten of the statements were quotes from the Bill of Rights amendments and five statements were foils which were not among the Bill of Rights amendments. A focus group discussion with the Honors students revealed several themes including those of rights and responsibility for educational curricula on the Bill of Rights. Analysis of the data indicated that these three groups did not present evidence of deep knowledge of the Bill of Rights by amendment number. We interpret the general lack of knowledge of the Bill of Rights as a warning regarding of the lack of value of the Bill of Rights and citizenship by state and federal governments and raise a concern of the possibility of a growing crisis in civic conscience of the citizenry of our country unless significant educational-policy countermeasures are taken.
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Amar, A. R. (1992). The Bill of Rights as a constitution. Retrieved from the Yale Law School Legal Scholarship
Repository website: https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2012&context=fss_papers
Antoci, A., Delfino, A., Paglieri, F., Panebianco, F., & Sabatini, F. (2016). Civility vs. incivility in online social
interactions: An evolutionary approach. PLOS ONE, 11(11), e0164286. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0164286.
Bill of Rights Institute. (2019). Constitution academy. Retrieved from:
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/engage/students-programs-events/academy/
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1981). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Call, I., & O’Brien, J. (2011). Secondary preservice teachers’ knowledge of the first amendment. Teacher Education
Quarterly, 115-133.
Carnegie Corporation of New York. (2011). Carnegie Review: A new civic mission of schools. Retrieved from: https://www.carnegie.org/media/filer_public/85/8b/858b7e5d-c538-42e2-ae78-24471dce73d7/ccny_creview_2011_civic.pdf
Center for Civic Education. (n.d.) We the people: The citizen and the Constitution. Retrieved from:
http://www.civiced.org/programs/wtp
Coggins III, P. E., & Heuer, J. (2017). Teacher education majors’ basic knowledge of U.S. constitutional rights and
pedagogical implications. International Research in Higher Education, 2(3), 1-15.
Heuer, J. & Coggins III, P. E. (2017). Criminal justice majors’ majors’ basic knowledge of U.S. constitutional rights
and pedagogical implications. International Journal of Higher Education, 6(4), 79-93.
Institute of Education Science. (2018). About the NAEP: A common measure of student achievement. Retrieved from:
https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/about/
Mokeyeva, E. V., & Andreeva, I. N. (2016). Civic and patriotic education of pre-school children. International
Journal of Environmental & Science Education, 11(9), 2223-2236.
Moore, J. (2012). A challenge for social studies educators: Increasing civility in schools and society by modeling
civic virtues. The Social Studies, 103(4), 140-148. doi: 10.1080/00377996.2011.596860
Morgan, L. A. (2016). Developing civic literacy and efficacy: Insights gleaned through implementation of Project
Citizen. i.e.: inquiry in education, 8(1), Article 3. Retrieved from: http://digitalcommons.nl.edu/ie/vol8/iss1/3
National Assessment of Educational Progress. (2014). The nation’s report card.Retrieved from:
https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/
National Council for the Social Studies. Retrieved from: https://www.socialstudies.org/
Pagnotti, J., & Russell III, W. B. (2015). A problem-based learning approach to civics education: Exploring the free
exercise clause with supreme court simulations. The Social Studies, 106(6), 281-2992.
Quigley, C. N., & Owen, D. (2016). Constitution day survey: Americans do not know much about the Constitution
but they support its basic ideas. Retrieved from:
http://www.civiced.org/images/stories/PDFs/ConstitutionDaySurvey_Summary.pdf
Rainie, L, Anderson, J., & Albright, J. (2017). The future of free speech, trolls, anonymity and fake news online. Pew
Research Center, Internet & Technology, Trust, Fast Facts and Democracy. Retrieved from:
https://www.pewinternet.org/2017/03/29/the-future-of-free-speech-trolls-anonymity-and-fake-news-online/
Reiff, J. D. (2016). What if a state required civic learning for all its undergraduates? High. Learn. Res. Commun.,
(2).
Stuteville, R., & Johnson, H. I. (2016). Citizenship education in the United States: Perspective reflected in state
education standards. Administrative Issue: Connecting Education, Practice, and Research, 6(1), 99-117.
U.S. Const. amends. I - X (1791). Retrieved from: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript
U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences, National Assessment of Educational Progress.
(November 2018). The nation’s report card: Civics 2010, 2014. Retrieved from:
https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5430/wjss.v7n1p12
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2020 World Journal of Social Science
World Journal of Social Science ISSN 2329-9347 (Print) ISSN 2329-9355 (Online)
Copyright © Sciedu Press
To make sure that you can receive messages from us, please add the 'sciedu.ca' and ‘sciedupress.com’ domains to your e-mail 'safe list'. If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox', please check your 'spam' or 'junk' folder.