We always know when the newest IPhone updates are coming out or when Justin Bieber changes his hair, but when it comes to current events, the average college student couldn’t tell you what is going on. It’s easy to see how these subjects can be boring. However, the easiest way to be informed is by reading news stories on the Internet or as weird as this sounds..a newspaper to see what is going on in the world. It won’t take up much of your time and believe it or not, they can act as a conversational tool when you find yourself in awkward situations where you don’t know what to talk about!
I wanted to see just how much college students really paid attention to the news and in general, what’s going on in the world. I surveyed 26 UC students about their general knowledge of current events, politics, and basic government structure. All of the students varied in age, race, gender and political views. This survey consisted of five current events in which the participants had to explain any info they know about each of the five stories.
WARNING! These results may shock you! Less than 20% of participants said they were both informed about a certain event listed and felt like they could accurately explain it to someone else. 50% were both uninformed about a certain event listed and couldn’t explain it to another individual. THAT’S OVER HALF! Over half the people I surveyed didn’t know what was going on in our country. To make things even worse….out of those 26 people, 3 of them did not know who ISIS was and 18 of them could only identify ISIS as a terrorist group and nothing more.
If you thought things couldn’t get worse, you’re wrong. Thanks to School of Rock, we learned how a bill becomes a law and how a veto works. How much of this do you think actually stuck with us after leaving elementary school? Based on these answers, clearly not a lot.
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61% of participants didn’t know the number of House of Representatives (435)
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42% couldn’t name 4 current presidential candidates (Republican or Democrat)
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More than half didn’t know how many times the Constitution had been amended (27)
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34% did not know the Preamble at all. 38% just knew “We The People”
After conducting this survey, I did receive multiple texts claiming this survey was so hard and I didn’t intend for it to be challenging!
On the bright side:
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96% knew who the Vice President is
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96% could identify the three branches of government
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96% knew the first 10 amendments were called the Bill of Rights
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84% knew how many senators per state there were
As college students, I completely understand that we are all very busy, therefore it can be hard to catch up with what’s going on each and every day. Reading the news can be time consuming, however websites like theSkimm (http://theskimm.com/) have made accessing the news easier! By subscribing to this daily e-mail newsletter, you can have access to broken down or “skimmed” versions of top International and National stories. Taking 15 minutes can improve your knowledge greatly and you can help inform your friends about current events! It’s never too late to become informed and it can be easy to criticize others when they don’t seem to have basic knowledge. Yet, if you were to be surveyed, how many of these questions would you answer correctly? I encourage everyone to brush up on his or her facts and maybe browse the web for something other than the latest celebrity feud.