Americans ‘woefully ignorant’ about US

WASHINGTON – Americans are woefully ignorant about their own country, let alone anywhere else, reveals a survey.

More than a third failed the official US Citizenship Test, a rudimentary exam taken by immigrants, and 29 per cent could not name their vice-president as Joe Biden.Four out of ten could not name the country’s enemies in the Second World War and more than a fifth knew nothing about Martin Luther King. Nearly three-quarters had no idea why America got involved in the Cold War.The poll of 1 000 people for Newsweek magazine also revealed 44 per cent could not define the Bill of Rights, 81 per cent could not name a single federal power and only 6 per cent knew there are 27 amendments to their Constitution.It is not the first poll to highlight lack of knowledge. In 2009, a survey about international affairs showed only 58 per cent of Americans could identify the Taliban despite the war on terrorIn 2010, a poll about religion showed 29 per cent did not know Jesus was born in Bethlehem.Dalton Conley, of New York University, told Newsweek: ‘We have a lot of very poor people without access to good education, and a huge immigrant population that doesn’t even speak English.’ – Daily Mail

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