Why am I not surprised



Cheating college students

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AI...34&template=printart
September 19, 2007


Cal Thomas - "If you can read this, thank a teacher," says the bumper sticker on the car in front of me. But literacy is more than the ability to read a bumper sticker. It includes the accumulation of basic knowledge combined with a way of thinking that allows an individual to lead a life that is personally productive and contributes to America's health and welfare.

For the second year in a row, America's elite universities and colleges have failed to rise above a "D plus" on tests of basic knowledge about civics and American history, maintains a study commissioned by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI). In 2005, ISI contracted with the University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy (UConnDPP) to administer tests of basic historical and civic knowledge to 14,000 students at 50 top schools, including Yale, Harvard, Cornell, the University of Virginia, Brown and Duke. The survey found students "were no better off than when they arrived in terms of acquiring the knowledge necessary for informed engagement in a democratic republic and global economy." Since an education at top colleges can cost as much as $40,000 a year, it would appear those paying the bill are being cheated.

ISI's final report titled "The Coming Crisis in Citizenship: Higher Education's Failure to Teach America's History and Institutions," presented four pivotal findings:

(1) The average college senior knows very little about America's history, government, international relations and market economy. Their average score on the civic literacy test was 53.2 percent. "No class of seniors scored higher than 69 percent, or D plus."

(2) Prestige doesn't pay off. "An Ivy League education contributes nothing to a student's civic learning. ... There is no relationship between the cost of attending college and the mastery of America's history, politics, and economy."

(3) Students don't learn what colleges don't teach. "Schools where students took or were required to take more courses related to America's history and institutions," says the ISI, "outperformed those schools where fewer courses were completed. The absence of required courses in American history, political science, philosophy and economics suggests a negative impact on students' civic literacy."

America's most prestigious colleges had the worst scores. Many schools that typically were most popular scored among the lowest in advancing civic knowledge. Generally, the ISI study found, the higher the ranking by U.S.News and World Report in its annual survey of institutions of higher education, the lower the rank in civic learning. "Even when controlling for numerous variables that influence learning, seniors at schools with reasonably strong core curricula — for example, Rhodes, Calvin and Wheaton — had double the gain in civic learning compared with those seniors at schools without a coherent core curriculum — for example, Brown, Cornell and Stanford."

(4) Greater civic learning goes hand-in-hand with more active citizenship. "Students who demonstrated greater learning of America's history and its institutions were more engaged in citizenship activities such as voting, volunteer community service and political campaigns." The study found "86 percent of the students at the four highest-ranked colleges had exercised their right to vote at least once. At Colorado State, ranked second overall, 90 percent of seniors had voted at least once. ... Higher civic learning and greater civic involvement are closely associated."

Here are three of the test questions. Even partially informed people who believe American history is a better teacher than fascination and fixation on the latest news about Britney Spears and O.J. Simpson ought to be able to answer them correctly. The entire 60 multiple-choice questions can be found on ISI's Web site, www.isi.org.
• Which battle brought the American Revolution to an end: (a) Saratoga, (b) Gettysburg, (c) the Alamo, (d) Yorktown, (e) New Orleans?

• The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1964) was significant because it: (a) ended the war in Korea, (b) gave President Johnson the authority to expand the scope of the Vietnam War, (c) was an attempt to take foreign policy power away from the president, (d) allowed China to become a member of the United Nations, or (e) allowed for oil exploration in Southeast Asia.

• Which of the following is the best measure of production or output of an economy (a) gross domestic product, (b) Consumer Price Index, (c) unemployment rate (d), prime rate (e) exchange rate?

Everyone should take the test. No cheating and no, I'm not going to give you the answers. If you're interested enough to read this column, you ought to be smart enough to know them. If not, then you paid too much college tuition, or didn't take college seriously enough to get a real education.

In 1777, John Adams wrote to his son about the importance of education. He said it was necessary to teach the next generation about America's Founding principles to preserve the freedom and independence so many of his fellow countrymen sacrificed to achieve. Only when we know and embrace those principles can we pass on to a new generation that which we inherited from the past. The ISI study reveals severe cracks in that foundation; cracks that need immediate attention and repair.

"You will never know how much it cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you use it wisely." --John Adams

Why should anybody be surprised? Just consider the ignorance of history, human behavior, and cause-and-effect manifest in the postings of the (il)liberals, the leftist types, who post in this forum. Their mantra: form over substance. Political correctness over honesty.

Along with the lack of discipline concerning education, the indiscipline spills over into ever more whining for guvmint to provide unearned handouts in the flakey, means-whatever-is-convenient name of "fairness"--as long as it's predominantly somebody else's money that assuages their spiritual self-flaggelation.

Because they lack discipline, their behavior and life choice outcomes are generally not as good as those who have disciplined themselves to sacrifice time and intellect so as to gain truth in their understanding and better favor, generally, in economic developments.

Well, since the most liberal states like Mass., Conn, the New England states, and and even New Jersey for crying out loud have the highest percentages of high school students who go on to 4-year universities, not to mention the highest average SAT scores in the nation, conservatives have little to argue with here. If so-called "poltically correct" and liberal indocrination is to blame for education standards, then why do conservative states in the Deep South (and the least PC) also have the lowest SAT scores?

Also, most people who end up getting master's degrees and education above a bachelor's tend to lean liberal in their politics, so personal politics has little to do with quality of education. After all, has anyone here ever taken the GREs? Its not that easy, and the fact that "liberals" seem to have no problem with standardized tests indicates that all this "liberalism is to blame for our failed education system" is just noise.

And I submit to you that the basic premise of this whole undertaking is flawed: it is not the job of colleges and universities to provide basic skills in anything - English, math, literature, spelling, science, American history or civics.That is the specific responsibility of primary and secondary schools.

Colleges exist to take that fundamental knowledge gained before and build upon it, teaching critical thinking and analytical skills first generally, then specifically to individual subject areas (majors).

Cal Thomas is, as usual, beating the wrong horse. Thanks to the NCLB Act, primary and secondary education is dumbed down and teaching is done to standardized tests, not subject matter. In addition, fear of litigation because one parent gets PO'd about sex ed or the mention of Islam as a world religion (just examples) hamstrings teachers beyond measure. The unrealistic expectation that SCHOOLS will teach manners, respect, responsibility and other societal niceties - instead of this being done by parents, as in the past - means less and less time for teaching why the Civil War was and is a big deal.

So - how about backing off the colleges and their alleged political biases and taking a closer look at your own school district's performance?

PS. In taking the quiz, I scored 76.67% - slightly above average for September. Most of my errors were in the section of questions on economics. I graduated from one of the universities mentioned in the original article.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Cider33Alpha,

quote:

PS. In taking the quiz, I scored 76.67% - slightly above average for September. Most of my errors were in the section of questions on economics. I graduated from one of the universities mentioned in the original article.

I beat the avg too.



The point is these colleges and U's need to teach and require those subjects more.

quote:

Originally posted by xavierob82:
Well, since the most liberal states like Mass., Conn, the New England states, and and even New Jersey for crying out loud have the highest percentages of high school students who go on to 4-year universities, not to mention the highest average SAT scores in the nation, conservatives have little to argue with here. If so-called "poltically correct" and liberal indocrination is to blame for education standards, then why do conservative states in the Deep South (and the least PC) also have the lowest SAT scores?

Also, most people who end up getting master's degrees and education above a bachelor's tend to lean liberal in their politics, so personal politics has little to do with quality of education. After all, has anyone here ever taken the GREs? Its not that easy, and the fact that "liberals" seem to have no problem with standardized tests indicates that all this "liberalism is to blame for our failed education system" is just noise.

Do you have a link for this info?

The Chronicle of Higher Education
From the issue dated December 8, 2000



The Renaissance of Anti-Intellectualism
By TODD GITLIN

The presidential campaign ended, effectively, in a tie, but it did speak clearly about the value accorded intellectuals and intellectuality in American culture. What it declared is, to say the least, inauspicious.

However the next four years play out in the White House, George W. Bush deserves a certain credit for resurrecting -- though probably not intentionally -- the subject of anti-intellectualism. Like Dan Quayle before him, but even more conspicuously (Bush's gaffes provided horror-comic relief during a campaign marked by its narrowed themes and horse-race obsessions), the governor of Texas proved an inadvertent shill for the comedy routines that have become an increasingly visible showcase for the spectacle of national politics.

Gov. Malaprop accomplished that dubious objective by various means: semantic spatter, most memorably "subliminable" for "subliminal," but also "subscribe" for "ascribe," "retort" for "resort," "hostile" for "hostage," and so on; inversions and juxtapositions of singular verbs and plural nouns, as in "Our priorities is our faith" and "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream"; and an ineptitude so guileless ("Social Security is not a federal program") as to embarrass the literal-minded who affect intellectual seriousness, for after a certain point it seems rude to call attention to the obvious, or "elitist" to notice something that viewers haven't noticed.

Early in the campaign, Bush had famously dubbed the inhabitants of Greece "Grecians" and flubbed a talk-show host's quiz about names of foreign leaders. There was so much ignorance on display as to raise the suspicion, on one hand, that Bush was dyslexic or, on the other, that this lazy-minded graduate of Andover, Yale, and Harvard Business School was a chip off his father's pork rinds, appealing self-consciously to his audience's resentment of brains. Thanks to videotape and a media maw hungry for simple charges and sound bites, Duh-bya seemed to have stridden right out of central casting, a veritable personification of the politician as clown.

Yet none of the easy charges against Bush touched upon his more substantial incapacities: his lack of curiosity about the world (he has scarcely traveled outside the United States and Mexico City) and the ample evidence that he does not reason. During the debates, he was unresponsive to questions the answers to which he had not memorized. In public appearances, he spoke in sloganistic lists, not arcs. It would seem that, precisely because his thinking was disordered, the governor lost track of his points, so that items came out nonsensical, as in: "Drug therapies are replacing a lot of medicines as we used to know it."

There has been much talk since the election to the effect that "two nations" were evenly matched in the contest: roughly speaking, the rural, inland, heavily male, and white Bushland versus the urban, coastal, heavily female, black, and immigrant Goreland. To be sure, suspicion of intellectuals and intellectuality was visible in both camps, but most plainly so in Bush's. So it came to pass that half of the voting population was appalled that the other half judged this man of little discernible achievement, little knowledge of the world or curiosity about it, to be an acceptable president of the United States. His defenders were in the position of claiming that it didn't matter whether the governor was smart or not, he could hire a smart staff, thereby certifying that intelligence was something for underlings.

In the minds of many of Bush's supporters, the absence of thoughtfulness, the narrowness of scope, the presence of diminished capacity were all reduced to a question of "management style." Gore, meanwhile, suffered bad reviews for his dismissive and overbearing style of intellectual combat. In the eyes of half the population, the vice president fell prey to a suspicion that he was not only preachy but also a sharpie. In the media's campaign story line, the standard charge against Gore, shared by the Bush campaign and the comedians, was that, like the traditional confidence man, Gore -- too smart for his own good -- lied, while Bush was the amiable common man.

Thirty-seven years have passed since the appearance of the last substantial book to take seriously, in the words of its title, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Richard Hofstadter's tour de force, appearing in 1963, is actually a product of the 1950's. Like many intellectuals, Hofstadter was disturbed by the general disdain for "eggheads," haunted by Joseph McCarthy's thuggish assault on Dean Acheson and his Anglophilic ways, and dismayed by Eisenhower's taste for Western novels and his tangled syntax (which was not yet understood to be, at least sometimes, not simply incompetent but deliberately evasive). Had not Eisenhower himself in 1954 (no doubt in words written for him by another hand) cited a definition of an intellectual as "a man who takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he knows"? (How much more congenial was Stevenson, who once cracked: "Eggheads of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks!")

Probing for historical roots of a mood that was sweeping (if somewhat exaggerated by intellectuals), Hofstadter found that "our anti-intellectualism is, in fact, older than our national identity." He cited, among others, the Puritan John Cotton, who wrote in 1642, "The more learned and witty you bee, the more fit to act for Satan will you bee"; and Baynard R. Hall, who wrote in 1843 of frontier Indiana: "We always preferred an ignorant bad man to a talented one, and hence attempts were usually made to ruin the moral character of a smart candidate; since unhappily smartness and wickedness were supposed to be generally coupled, and incompetence and goodness."

Yet, according to the historian Lawrence W. Levine, the illiterate Rocky Mountain scout Jim Bridger could recite long passages from Shakespeare, which he learned by hiring someone to read the plays to him. "There is hardly a pioneer's hut that does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare," Alexis de Tocqueville found on his trip through America in 1831-32. Here lay a supremely American paradox: The same Americans who valued the literacy of commoners were suspicious of experts and tricksters.

In his unsurpassed survey, Hofstadter described three pillars of anti-intellectualism -- evangelical religion, practical-minded business, and the populist political style. Religion was suspicious of modern relativism, business of regulatory expertise, populism of claims that specialized knowledge had its privileges. Those pillars stand. But, as Hofstadter recognized, something was changing in American life, and that was the uneasy apotheosis of technical intellect.

The rise of big science during World War II, and its normalization during the cold war, along with the Sputnik panic of 1957, made "brains" more reputable among respectable citizens who had their own ideas about the force of common sense but had to acknowledge that expertise delivered material goods. Then as now, the "brains" that became admirable were brains kept in their place. To the extent that brains were admirable, it was because they were instrumental -- they prevented polio, invented computers, launched satellites.

By the 1990's, the geek was an acceptable good guy, the nerd an entrepreneurial hero. That sense of the supreme position of useful intellect is preserved in the current phrase, "It's not rocket science" -- implying that real rocket science is the grandest field of intellectual dreams.

Hofstadter did most of his research before Kennedy came to the White House, and he understood that Kennedy's brief ascendancy did not change the fundamentals. Kennedy was not especially serious about the life of the mind, but he was elegant, witty, and, by all accounts, enjoyed the occasional presence of intellectuals. John Kenneth Galbraith and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. were adornments. Never mind that Kennedy's reading tilted heavily toward Ian Fleming, who in the James Bond books supplied the president with a man of action's idea of the debonair, the sort of fellow whose European accent can be mistaken for mental accomplishment.

Even into the Johnson administration, the White House ceremonially invited intellectuals and high artists to visit, culminating in the public-relations disaster of a White House festival of the arts, in 1965, that was boycotted by some writers and artists while others circulated an antiwar petition at the event.

The force of Hofstadter's insight into persistent anti-intellectualism despite the rising legitimacy of technical experts would be clear five years after he published his book. George Wallace ran well in several Democratic Party primaries, and eventually, too, as a third-party candidate, while campaigning against "pointy-headed bureaucrats" -- precisely the classic identification of intellect with arbitrary power that Hofstadter had identified as the populist hallmark.

There was a left-wing version of this presupposition, too. A populist strain in the 60's student movement, identifying with the oppressed sharecroppers of the Mississippi Delta and the dispossessed miners of Appalachia, bent the principle "Let the people decide" into a suspicion of all those who were ostensibly knowledgeable. Under pressure of the Vietnam War, the steel-rimmed technocrat Robert S. McNamara came to personify the steel-trap mind untethered by insight, and countercultural currents came to disdain reason as a mask for imperial arrogance.

In his first gubernatorial campaign in 1966, Ronald Reagan deployed a classic anti-intellectual theme -- portraying students as riotous decadents. Real education was essentially a matter of training, and breaches of discipline resulted in nihilism and softness on communism. The Nixon-Agnew team proceeded to mobilize resentment against "nattering na-bobs of negativism," successfully mobilizing a "silent majority" against a verbose minority. That was to flower into a major neoconservative theme thereafter.

As candidate and president, the smooth-spoken if intellectually challenged Reagan succeeded in availing himself of an indulgent press and an adoring constituency that, at the least, did not mind his incapacity. He did not suffer from his evident contempt for professorial types, his half-educated ignorance of history and reliance on crackpot sources, his embrace of the notion that trees cause pollution. That he was opposed by sophisticated types only inflated his aura.

By the 1990's, "elitism" had become an all-purpose epithet, used by neoconservatives against the "new class" (consisting of all political intellectuals with the exception of themselves), but also by hard multiculturalists against "the neo-Enlightenment project," by relativists in general against objectivists in general. Populist resentment flourished even as (and, perhaps in part, because) populist egalitarianism of an economic stripe was dwindling.

The counterculture had introduced suspicion of professionalized rationality -- swelling the reputation of "alternative" medicine and elevating herbs and homeo-pathic, chiropractic, and osteopathic treatments to alternatives to plodding old Western therapies. Hofstadter had made much of the distinction between critical intellectuals (suspected, sometimes justifiably, of being ideologues) and expert intellectuals ("on tap, not on top," in the terms of the early atomic scientists), but thanks to the postmodern mood of the intervening decades, many experts had come to be tarred with the same brush as ideologues. College students were heard to complain that certain professors were excessive in their vocabularies. Even in the classroom, "boring" became an epithet of choice.

A central force boosting anti-intellectualism since Hofstadter published his book has been the bulking up of popular culture and, in particular, the rise of a new form of faux cerebration: punditry. Everyday life, supersaturated with images and jingles, makes intellectual life look hopelessly sluggish, burdensome, difficult. In a video-game world, the play of intellect -- the search for validity, the willingness to entertain many hypotheses, the respect for difficulty, the resistance to hasty conclusions -- has the look of retardation.

Again, there is a continuity to the earlier nation. Long before Hollywood or MTV, Tocqueville observed that Americans were drawn to novelty, turnover, and sensation. How much more so in a world of cascading, all-pervasive images, where two-thirds of children grow up with 24/7 access to television in their bedrooms, where video and computer games flourish, where mobile phones guarantee access when and where one chooses, where the right to be instantly entertained and in-touch seems to preoccupy more of the citizenry than the right to vote and to have their votes properly counted.

There is a seeming paradox that Hofstadter did not anticipate, but would have appreciated. In the torrent of popular culture, there emerges more talk about public affairs than ever before -- virtually nonstop talk about political concerns, debate on burning questions available at all hours of the day and night. But the talk that fills the channels amounts mainly to signals, gestures, and stances -- not reasoning.

Television reporting and punditry are the tributes that entertainment pays to the democratic ideal of discourse. The political talk does not, in the main, evaluate or research: It "covers." When CNN's Washington bureau chief can say casually, "The Texas governor hammered home some of his major themes, including Social Security," this is shorthand, but not only shorthand -- it is a surrogate for reasoning. Positions are signaled -- candidates "position themselves" -- rather than defended; no defending is demanded of them. A topic is a "theme" is a "position" is an "issue" is news.

All the more so does punditry diffuse a debased version of intellectual life, cornering intellect in the name of chat, operating by a sort of Gresham's law of discourse. Punditry is concerned with reviewing performances, rating "presidentiality," itemizing themes, relaying and interpreting spin, not thoughtfully assessing politicians' claims, evaluating their evidence, judging their reasoning. To assess the quality of what politicians say would require intellectual work for which the pundits do not demonstrate competency. Pundits are hired, rather, for the facility and pungency of their presentations and the ferocity and acceptability of their opinions.

The most bookish of pundits, George Will, was hired for the Anglophilic elegance of his sneers, not for logical mastery or historical depth. The punditocracy, as Eric Alterman calls it, does not assess either reason or reasons. Its job is simply to declare which issues are discussable, which positions presentable. It makes up for its intellectual deficits by supplying precooked opinion. The point is not to clarify: It is never to be at a loss for words. Surely the English infusion into American journalism -- the premium on corrosive wit, the fusion of intellectual name-dropping with tabloid meanness -- belongs to this trend: the show of intellect without the demanding work.

When Hofstadter wrote, the dominant intellectuals were either experts or ideologues. The most influential pundit was Walter Lippmann. But the crucial public development since Hofstadter's time is the rise of the pseudo-intellectual, thanks to the premium on smirking and glibness, which, in much of the popular mind, passes for intellect. The pundit is a smart person in both senses -- intelligent and a smarty-pants -- and his knowingness about how the game is played is a substitute for knowledge about what would improve society. Punditry is to intellectual life as fast food is to fine cuisine.

After Gore, self-cast as wonk-expert and therefore prey to precisely the anti-intellectualism that Hofstadter identified, challenged Bush to state his position on the Dingell-Norwood patients-rights' bill during the third debate, and Bush avoided the question, the pseudo-brains of ABC's This Week, Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson, made much mirth by mocking the names. They did not think it their obligation to clarify what Gore was talking about. Deadly, that would have been. Chock full of attitude, deploying the cheap gags and knowingness that mark them as qualified for their jobs, those maestros of the Beltway paraded their superiority to knowledge while (as Michael Kinsley pointed out) refraining from showing that they knew more than the public.

Surely television is a boon to anti-intellectualism, with its encouragement of emotional chords and comfort, but the degradations of public life that afflict us are not primarily visual achievements. It is language and sound, most of all, that warp the public discourse. That is true not only in the presentation of politics but of science, education, and many another subject. The sound-bite discourse cultivated by television pumps up the imperative "Cut to the chase," reinforcing the fetish of "the bottom line."

It is not that the sound-bite culture was imposed upon what was previously unrelievedly brilliant politics. From "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" to "I like Ike," American history is soaked in sound-bite prefigurations. Warren G. Harding may not have been much better than George W. Bush. But the more striking transformation in American commentary takes us in 50 years from Walter Lippmann, a man of tremendous historical and philosophical sophistication, to Tim Russert, an intelligent man who specializes in "Gotcha!" questions and gives Rush Limbaugh respectful interviews, defending that choice on the ground that, after all, Limbaugh "speaks to 20-million people." Thus does knowingness make its peace with populism.

In the Bushes, pËre et fils, we see another turn in the history of the American aversion to intellect. Hofstadter rightly noted the 19th-century aristocratic disdain for practical intellectuals, the business types and experts whose rising power displaced their own. The Roosevelt cousins, different in many respects, both honored the life of the mind: Theodore as writer, Franklin as a collector of advisers. Old money respected brains.

But the Bushes are men of social credentials who went to the right schools and passed through them without any detectable mark. They represent aristocracy with a populist gloss, borrowing what they can from the evangelical revival, siding with business and its distaste for time-wasting mind work, holding intellectual talent in contempt from both above and below. Pleasant enough for the pundits, they have been able to count on a surplus of populist ressentiment. That Bush fils, country-club Republican, could gain stature (and keep a straight face) in his presidential campaign for proposing an "education presidency" and denouncing an "education recession" tells us something about the closing of the American mind that Allan Bloom did not dream of.

Todd Gitlin is a professor of culture, journalism, and sociology at New York University, and the author of The Sixties and The Twilight of Common Dreams. He is completing his next book, Infinite Glimmer: On a World Saturated With Images.

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So - how about backing off the colleges and their alleged political biases and taking a closer look at your own school district's performance?

Well...can't back off colleges because they ARE politically biased. Always have been. They have become playing grounds for political agendas.....education is secondary.

ALL school districts need close scrutiny. Parents (collectively) need to be involved with EVERY decision a school makes. Be watchful of teacher's agendas. Socialists are invading schools everywhere.

This is one area of society, mankind that needs turning back. Out with the new and back in with the old. The 3 R's plus history and civics should be taught before ANYTHING else. Do well in the basics before we move kids on.

If colleges see students deficeint in a required subject, why aren't they doing something about it? Colleges have scholstic requirements....if a student cannot meet them...isn't there recourse? like scholastic suspension? Or a "no pass" to next grade level? Required bonehead classes in summer school? Sure as hell had these back when I was going to college.

Bottom line, colleges aren't off the hook. Oh, and those "elite" universities? They have produced the some of very teachers who are failing our young people today.

Gee I didn't know this thread was about Bush bashing. Nice going Quipster on attempting to derail the thread and sneak in anti-Bush crap.

Great article, Quipster, and IMHO very applicable to the subject at hand.

Izzy, how many primary and secondary teachers come from those "elite" colleges and universities? Not many (Barbara Bush [the daughter, not the mom] being a notable exception) - most come from state universities or private schools of "less than elite" status. A sad reflection on the relative importance placed on teaching, I think.

Colleges don't "pass" or "promote" students from one year to the next - movement towards a degree is measured in credit hours successfully completed. Plenty of schools (most) have a minimum competency in English, math and science to gain entrance - but it's also true that money talks, and if you've got the cash to pay Harvard's tuition up front but borderline competencies, well, let's say that Harvard might be inclined to help you arrange for tutoring or special courses to catch up.

Neither public nor private colleges and universities are accountable to a "school board" that dictates curricula and texts the way primary or secondary schools are accountable. College governing boards are made up of appointed individuals - usually some alumni, influential local citizens, a respected professor or subject-matter expert or two if they can get them. While an individual professor or teaching assistant can set the tone for his/her class, a sixth-grade teacher is far more vulnerable to the political whims of his/her locality that determine which films and textbooks and additional readings and topics for discussion or review are acceptable or unacceptable (the exception being religious institutions that will only allow teaching that is congruent with that religious denomination's beliefs).

My final point about colleges is that they are, unfortunately, as much about business as about education. There came a point when, in order to have enough students coming in to stay afloat, even the "elite" schools had to accept some degree of lower SAT and ACT scores, high school GPAs and such - and that meant spending $$$ on remedial courses and staff to teach them. Which, of course, raised tuition.

I agree there is a need to get back to the future - concentrate on the 3 Rs, what used to be called "social studies," fundamental skills for life. Leave the politically correct crapola outside and get government out of the schools.

quote:

Originally posted by GunnyRet03:

quote:

PS. In taking the quiz, I scored 76.67% - slightly above average for September. Most of my errors were in the section of questions on economics. I graduated from one of the universities mentioned in the original article.

I beat the avg too.



The point is these colleges and U's need to teach and require those subjects more.

-------------------
I got the exact same score - 76.67%. Interesting.

State schools in Georgia require these subjects (including STATE history) for a degree. Part of the core curriculum. (At least back in "my day.)

LOL - back in my day (you know, when people chiseled on rocks), state history was the 4TH GRADE history subject, and US history/govt. was taught in every grade, with increasing depth and complexity. World (read: Western) history was a high school subject.

3-4 years of math, 4 years of English, 2 years of a foreign language, 3 years of science, 2 years of phys. ed., the rest electives - that was the college-prep curriculum in the two different high schools I attended (one overseas, one in PA). Oh, and in PA, a year of "health ed" - a euphemism for sex ed. (That teacher was a hoot - she was also a house mother for a frat house at the local college [Dickinson], and when asked about sex before marriage, she replied, "Well, would you buy a horse without riding it?" We loved her!)

My younger son's requirements (he graduated from a WV public HS in '97), in comparison, were ones my classmates and I could have completed in our sleep. My older son attended a Catholic high school in the DC area ('91), and his requirements were much closer to mine - and the statistics about the graduates of those two schools show the difference in quality. (Though Son#2 is the one who attended and graduated from college ... go figure.)

EXPELL THEM..

Having graduated from one of those Midwest, you klnow, flyover states colleges, following 20 years in the military, I managed to eke out an 80% on the test. The liberals may want to assign a special prosecutor to examine the test and my answers, since we are all hicks out here, in their opinion. Except for Clinton and Obama, of course they were educated in an elite college so they can be forgiven their brief stints in flyover country.

Society has become so dummed down that the college degree once considered the pinical of education and an accomplishment worthy of recognition, has become like an Azzhole everyone has one and most have learned nothing.

BTW, Gunny - what does cheating have to do with the article you posted? Or is that just your opinion, that all college students cheat?

Or are you trying to say that society - specifically, the American educational system - has cheated college students, in that they are not properly prepared for college in a number of areas?

quote:

You answered 49 out of 60 correctly — 81.67 %
Average score for this quiz during September: 74.7%
Average score since September 18, 2007: 74.7%

You can take the quiz as often as you like, however, your score will only count once toward the monthly average.

If you have any comments or questions about the quiz, please email americancivi****eracy@isi.org.

I'm somewhat surprised....I think I guessed well. I wouldn't consider that I know much about US civics; I'm a lot more interested in European military history, given that's where my ancestors came from. Any other non-US citizens want to give it a go?

As far as the thread goes, I think it's a bit of a media beat up....those questions struck me as desirable, but not essential, knowledge to encourage participation in political debate. People really ought to know the constitutional questions, but there was a lot of baggage in there.

way below average

quote:

You answered 39 out of 60 correctly — 65.00 %
Average score for this quiz during September: 74.6%

But probably not bad enough to get on Leno's Tonight Show

quote:

BTW, Gunny - what does cheating have to do with the article you posted? Or is that just your opinion, that all college students cheat?

Or are you trying to say that society - specifically, the American educational system - has cheated college students, in that they are not properly prepared for college in a number of areas?

I didnt write the title, thas the authors and yes, I believe students are being cheated. If you go to the site they have some great data. Its a shame when a students scores higher as a freshman and when their a senior score lower.

Many variables there...Senior vs Sophomore...Was apathy considered?

55 out of 60, 91.67%
Having spent the last 2 semesters learning about much that was on the test, it is still pretty fresh in my memory.

quote:

Many variables there...Senior vs Sophomore...Was apathy considered?

Why would it, you mean excuses considered?

How do you grade on an apathy scale?

I only got 42 out of 60. I thought I would have done better.

quote:

Originally posted by GunnyRet03:

quote:

Many variables there...Senior vs Sophomore...Was apathy considered?

Why would it, you mean excuses considered?

How do you grade on an apathy scale?

Who cares.

Bahm humbug. The article grossly misrepresent the situation. Probably to make it attractive to old fogies like us: (eg: "todays youth is worthless & out of control, etc, etc, etc.")
Look at the data below:

from the INCREASED CIVIC KNOWLEDGE MOST table

---

Ranked by Value Added
     College                                   Freshmen    Seniors     Value Added
top scorers:
 1.  Eastern Connecticut State University*     31.34%      40.99%      +9.65%
 2.  Marian College (WI)* 	               33.66%      43.10%      +9.44%

bottom scrapers:
49.  Yale University                           68.94%      65.85%      -3.09%
50.  Cornell University                        61.90%      56.95%      -4.95%

---

It is not because the Ivy League colleges are bad, it is because they are hard to get into.
Their students arrive knowing more than twice as much history, so they dont really need to focus on that.

Oops. soory about the link. the 4 stars was introduced by our friendly military.com censor. Replace them with the letters 'C' 'L' 'I' and 'T'.
Maybe we should start a thread about Baalams ***

I didnt write the title, thas the authors and yes, I believe students are being cheated. If you go to the site they have some great data. Its a shame when a students scores higher as a freshman and when their a senior score lower.


Party time. Thats why they should pay for it with student Loans. Let them pizz thier own money away. Depending how they do in college the parents can then pay the loans off later if they maintain an agreed upon GPA. maybe then they would be more responsible.

For what it's worth, I scored 48 out of 60, or 80%.

I'm afraid I was a tad weak on the US constitutional stuff.

quote:

Originally posted by mainedawg:
I only got 42 out of 60. I thought I would have done better.

Mainedawg: This test reminds me of a cross between the MMPI and the Mensa tests. Multiple choice, but still worded to fail to a certain degree.

I still got a 94%, but that is only because I love history and read it constantly. Conversely, I really dislike economics and that is where I went down.