There's no need for utter despair: twenty percent know that the sun revolves around the earth

Taking a break from his congressional campaign, FWIW reader Pierre Delecto has sent along a poll showing that a sizeable number of the Leastest Generation (so far) thinks we gained our independence by ousting Russians, or Indians, or maybe Mexico, or, you know, man, somebody!

Galop has a similar poll, with similar results:

What country did the U.S. win its independence from? In the 18-29 set, 66% correctly guessed it was Great Britain, as opposed to, among other answers, Russia or Mexico.

Here’s a chart from the first (non-Gallop) poll:

The trouble with naive fools like myself who think that we should educate school children in civics, so that they can understand our country and how it is structured and governed, is that we assume an ability and interest among students that simply isn’t there. I’m sure 90% of the young people polled by Gallop can name influencers and grade-B television actresses, but that probably exhausts their knowledge of the world.

It’s the same with language: I was horrified to learn, during a post-class review of an LSAT course I’d taught, that students accused me of being a sesquipedalian* — these were college graduates I was teaching, 22-year-olds intending to go on to law school, and I’d been deliberately addressing them as I did juries — no difficult words, and using a vocabulary that a 6th-grade graduate could be expected to know. Yet it was too much for some f them. They’re lucky I didn’t test them on the earth’s orbit.

*If you had to look that up, I assure you, I’m being funny