An Associated Press article published Tuesday disclosed startling information. Nearly 75 percent of American high school students said that they took the First Amendment for granted or didn’t know how they felt about it.

What the hell is going on? Ed Board can’t understand this phenomenon. Ed Board thought each succeeding generation was supposed to be more rebellious than the last.

Only half of the students in the article said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.

Hey, man, that infringes on our right to critique the bungling of current administrations. Critiquing government bungling has been one of the primary duties of newspapers since the founding of the colonies.

You know, the 13 colonies that revolted against England and came up with the Constitution and the First Amendment.

When asked whether people should be allowed to express unpopular views, 97 percent of teachers and 99 percent of school principals said yes. Only 83 percent of students did.

Now, we know that high school students are part of bratty cliques, but this is ridiculous.

Seventeen percent of high school students think that expressing unpopular views should be illegal. If this trend continues, then in a few years, we may find ourselves living in a tyrannical mob-ruled society. Wouldn’t that be great?

When all the youngsters get tired of paying for our social security, they might decide to off us. And nobody would be able to say a thing.

The Associated Press article supposes that the reason for this is because most high schools have recently cut their student newspapers, if one ever existed.

Ed Board believes this to be more serious than that. Obviously students either know almost nothing about the Constitution and Amendments, they don’t give a damn, or they actively dislike it.

If it’s the first case, then schools need to spend more time teaching about the Constitution.

As Hodding Carter III, president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which sponsored the $1 million study said in the article, “Ignorance about the basics of this free society is a danger to our nation’s future.’’

Ed Board suggests that those who ignore the value of the Constitution, or worse, don’t like it, should be exported to a country more to their preference.

Oh wait, that would be infringing on their First Amendment rights, never mind.