Don’t know much about history

Spokesman Josh Earnest walked back the idea the next day, after whetting the appetites of liberal activists.

Too often, partisans talk about tinkering with our system to improve voter turnout without fixing why the electorate isn’t showing up.

Not coincidentally, the midterm elections, with lower participation, shifted control of the Senate to the GOP.

[...] Democrats have looked at all manner of gimmicks to increase voter participation.

San Francisco supervisors are entertaining a measure to lower the voting age to 16 in some municipal elections.

If American schools did a better job teaching about history and government, students likely would grow up to be more engaged adults.

Alas, the latest testing by the National Assessment of Educational Progress — a.k.a. NAEP or the Nation’s Report Card — found that just 18 percent of eighth-graders scored proficient or better in history; 23 percent scored proficient or above in civics.

[...] close to 4 out of 5 middle schoolers don’t know much about history, while 3 out of 4 don’t know much about their government.

In 2010, NAEP also tested fourth-graders and high school seniors; only 12 percent of seniors scored “proficient” or better in history.

If young people don’t understand that the White House doesn’t operate by fiat, and that the courts and Congress have a role in determining national policy, including immigration policy, they may feel let down by the system when it actually is working as designed.

Kids today wouldn’t buy a cell phone without knowing how it works, yet their schools graduate young people into the world without a grounded understanding of how their own democratic institutions operate best.