Survey assignment - Essay Example

Reflection The result of my survey is quite reflective of our general apathy towards our government and political system that we no longer bothered that much to know how our government works. Imagine none of the respondents knew who the current Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court is! The survey also revealed that we cared less about Congress with only one knowing its voting members and only two knows the number of our Senators and only half knew who our representative to the Senate is.

I am aware that sometimes our Congress can be appalling but that does not suffice to disregard them. Whether we like it or not, they are still our Congress and they are our representatives in the government The result of the survey made me think that we are not putting much importance to our civic privileges. I think we became so immersed with other concerns that we overlooked how lucky we are. In the Middle East of which we barely cared about, people there, particularly in Syria that we do not know right now, has to fight a bloody war risking their lives and the people they cared about just to have a fraction of the civic privileges that we are enjoying now.

What is particularly bothersome is our seeming total lack of awareness of our judicial system as suggested by the respondent ignorance of our supreme magistrate. We do not seem to appreciate our right to have a fair trial and due process which many countries have still to fight for.The low score in geographic literacy in the survey is quite understandable because we already have a lot of problems to mind here in the US to bother about other countries. Apparently, most of us only know about Iraq and Iran and little about the rest of Middle East.

It is an eye opener that almost all respondents do not know where Israel (1 out of 10) is when it is a major flashpoint of conflict in the Middle East not to mention that US played a significant role in Israel.I have to mention also that the survey questions about geography are very basic and that we have to mind Middle East because a significant aspect of our foreign policy and military budget allocation is directed there. What I am trying to say is, whatever happens there affects us so we have to care.

In the final reflection on the result of the survey, I understood why it is necessary for us to study American Government class. It is not only to inform us about the names, numbers and dates of aspects of governance, but also to understand how our political system works that we may become better Americans in dispensing our civic duties. Imagine if there are no American Government classes to educate us on how our government and the rest of the world works, it will be an utter waste of democracy that was hard won by our forefathers because it is very likely that we are going to throw it away by our indifference, ignorance and disregard of its value.