What would Thomas Jefferson think?
When Thomas Jefferson penned the famous words "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence, he was expressing a conviction that our founding fathers most assuredly hoped would be ingrained in the hearts and minds of every generation of young Americans.
As the country celebrates another Independence Day, the day the nation honors the Declaration of Independence, chances are Thomas Jefferson would be very disappointed to know that most of America's college seniors, the nation's future leaders, can't identify the document from which this important phrase originates.
According to data analyzed by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) in Washington, D.C., only 48 percent of college seniors correctly identified the Declaration of Independence as the source for the phrase "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
Forty-two percent of seniors incorrectly identified the Preamble to the Constitution as the source for the phrase. More than 400 of the college students surveyed said the phrase could be found in Marx and Engels' The Communist Manifesto.
The question was posed to college students (14,000 randomly selected seniors and freshmen on 50 campuses) as part of a 60-question multiple-choice test about our nation's history and institutions administered by the University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy.
