U.S. Kids Don't Understand First Amendment

l4m3z0r writes "This rather alarming article discusses a study of high-school students in which they were asked about censorship, protected speech, and other aspects of the first amendment. The results are extremely worrisome: "Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories." and this "Three in four students said flag burning is illegal. It's not. About half the students said the government can restrict any indecent material on the Internet. It can't.".."

Comments

Re:Blame where blame is due

[syrinx]

I completely agree with your points. It's a big reason why I'm not a Democrat.

That said, the post you responded to was a blatant joke, making fun of the same people you're talking about. I think the key line was "I blame them for everything that is wrong everywhere." Sure, lots of people do that, but they don't tend to state it up front. :)

That's because people are sheep.

[Pig Hogger]

People are sheep.

Man is a social animal only too willing to surrender to the alpha-male of the colony.

Let's not forget that the ideas brought forward by the American Revolution, specifically the absolute freedom of speech, was not an acceptable idea in the time it was passed.

Until then, people unquestioningly accepted that their monarch could suppress speech at will, and, at the time, the notion that it could not was, well, revolutionnary.

What is 230 years in Human History? Practically nothing at all, so it is not surprising that the notion that free speech is not natural can very easily hide within the general human psyche and spontaneously burt out whenever someone is confronted by it.

After all, how many of those kids got their face slapped when they said something ++ungood to their parents???