The two groups were very similar in being in agreement with the freedoms provided by the amendment. The younger respondent asked more questions about what the wording meant which I expected because it was my 12-year-old sister. Where they differed was in recognition of the amendment, both of the Gen X participants recognized it immediately were as the Gen Z participant didn’t recognize it as the 1st amendment.

The patterns to me mean that all of my participants were very supportive of the amendment. My dad remarked. “ The government should never have any recourse in your rights, and there is no such thing as too much freedom.” My mother and sister also supported everything and my sister was surprised that it had to be written down, to begin with. To be fair she doesn’t even know what the Bill of Rights is yet.

The biggest surprise was probably from my dad who is a big supporter of our rights who noted right away that the phrasing of question three was misleading. He replied, “the Bill of Rights aren’t laws, and the notion that it would be considered a law is misleading, a law is passed by congress and restricts what a citizen can do were as the Bill of Rights was written explicitly to restrict the government.”

100% of the participants agreed with the freedoms, 100% support all of them and 66% knew it was the 1st amendment. The survey link provided was concerning in some ways that there are many people who think it provides too much freedom but it was good to see that the results changed once they had taken some coursework on the subject. It is concerning that the rights we are born with are not covered earlier in our academic lives. The fact that I have a 6th grade younger sister who didn’t even know what they are.