So why was Ben Franklin famous? Kentuckians flunk test of U.S. history knowledge.
If you know how many amendments there are to the U.S. Constitution, what Susan B. Anthony did and who said “Give me liberty or give me death,” you’re in a rare group in Kentucky.
Only 1 percent of state residents surveyed scored an A on a test of American history knowledge, according to results released Friday.
On the other end, 71 percent of Kentuckians made an F when answering 20 questions taken from the practice U.S. citizenship test, according to the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, which sponsored the survey.
Only Louisiana scored lower overall among the 50 states and Washington, D.C.
Louisiana had more people scoring As, but also more with Fs, at 73 percent, so Kentucky wasn’t dead last.
The breakdown of other grades in Kentucky was 6 percent with a B and 11 percent each with a C or D.
The other states at the back of the classroom were Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas.
Only one state, Vermont, had a majority of people who scored a passing grade, at 53 percent. Passing was anything above a score of 59.
The foundation said there wasn’t much to celebrate in the nationwide results.
Only four in 10 people nationwide passed the test, and among people under age 45, only 27 percent showed a basic understanding of U.S. history, the foundation said.
“Unfortunately, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation has validated what studies have shown for a century: Americans don’t possess the history knowledge they need to be informed and engaged citizens,” Arthur Levine, president of the foundation, said in a news release.
The foundation hired a research firm to do the survey, which was conducted online from November through January. The nationwide sample was 14,000 people.
The national margin of error was plus or minus 1 percentage point, but it was 5 percentage points for the results from Kentucky because of a relatively small sample size.
The survey found only 15 percent of adults in the country could name the year the U.S. Constitution was written and that 25 percent did not know freedom of speech is guaranteed in the First Amendment.
Levine said the problem is not whether high school history teachers are prepared, because its research indicates they are, but rather the way schools teach history, too often stressing memorizing information such as dates, events and leaders that adults don’t retain.
“Instead, knowledge of American history must serve as an anchor in a time when change assails us, a laboratory for studying the changes that are occurring and a vehicle for establishing a common bond when social divisions are deep,” Levine said.
The foundation said it was starting an initiative to provide high school students with an interactive platform to try to make history more interesting.
