...are "historically illiterate". But I live in a "college town", I knew that.
David Eisenhower, the historian who is the grandson of President Dwight Eisenhower, expressed similar sentiments in an afterword he wrote for one of several new editions of the Constitution being distributed nationwide. Citing a 1998 survey carried out for the National Constitution Center, a nonprofit group, he said: "More young Americans could name the Three Stooges than the three branches of government."
Constitution quiz
New York Times News Service September 17, 2005
Quick, who was the American general at the battle of Yorktown?
A) William Sherman B) Ulysses Grant C) Douglas MacArthur D) George Washington.
If you answered ###), you did better than two out of three graduates of America's top universities, many of whom picked [###] — and 6 percent picked [###]. Historians are citing those results along with a cascade of other data to argue that many Americans are, for all practical purposes, historically illiterate.
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050917/NEWS06/50917001&template=printart