And the Counterargument to Representation

Four out of five high school students felt they knew enough to give opinions on this 215-year-old list of rights. And among them, 55% thought the First Amendment goes too far in granting rights.

That's a turnaround from two years ago, when 57% expressed support for the First Amendment and its enumerated rights.

This reversal is so surprising that you want to find a flaw in the question wording or the methodology. But they were big samples: more than 100,000 in 2004 and nearly 15,000 in '06. The question was in a self-administered form that replicated the wording of the amendment and reminded students that it "became part of the U.S. Constitution more than 200 years ago."

and

Meanwhile, we can take small comfort in the fact that a bare majority of high school students, 54% (up from 51% in 2004), believes that newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of a story. They are more interested, however, in freedom for raunchy music: 69% agreed that "musicians should be allowed to sing songs with lyrics that others might find offensive."

I wonder how the attitude to our most basic liberties would correlate with, say, standardized test scores. It would be good to know if our education system is simply failing, or is actively counterproductive.