Learning the Declaration’s Ideas Again

In a few weeks, Americans across the country will mark the nation’s 250 th birthday. A time of celebration, yes, but also a time to reflect on the founders’ contributions and how their work informs us today. To this end, AEI inaugurated the “We Hold These Truths: America at 250” initiative , with symposia and volumes of essays on important aspects of America’s revolutionary heritage. As part of this initiative, AEI is also releasing a new public opinion survey on how Americans view our history and what our nation stands for. This is the first in a series of five blog posts with highlights from the survey. See the full report here. In a recent article , Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the survival of the ideas in the Declaration of Independence depended on “each passing generation learning them anew, engaging with the history that gave rise to them, and choosing them all over again.” Justice Gorsuch would be cheered by responses to several of the questions in AEI’s new America at 250 survey. A substantial majority (85 percent) said they could immediately give a good answer to “what the 4 th of July holiday actually celebrates,” while 13 percent said they would feel more comfortable looking it up. Large majorities of all racial, educational, partisan, and ideological groups could give a ready answer. Perhaps embracing Gorsuch’s view of the need for each generation to learn the Declaration’s ideas anew, 75 percent of respondents felt high school students should be required to study the Declaration of Independence this year as part of celebrating the 250 th anniversary of the founding, while 23 percent said this shouldn’t be required. A majority of 18- to 29-year-olds (61 percent) said it should be required this year.  In the survey, 29 percent said they had read the Declaration in full and 45 percent in part. 26 percent had not read it. See the full report here. The post Learning the Declaration’s Ideas Again appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI .