Boy, is this PATHETIC or what?!

As part of a program to strengthen the understanding of America's history and political institutions -- what it calls ``civic literacy" -- ISI commissioned a survey of more than 14,000 randomly selected freshmen and seniors at 50 four-year colleges and universities nationwide. The students were given 60 multiple-choice questions, testing their knowledge of US history, government, foreign affairs, and economics. The results were atrocious.

The average freshman flunked the test, correctly answering only 52 percent of the questions. The average score among seniors was equally pathetic: 53 percent...

``If a nation expects to be ignorant and free," Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1816, ``it expects what never was and never will be." If he was right, American freedom is headed for a cliff. ISI was startled to find that at almost one-third of the schools surveyed, seniors actually scored lower than freshmen. Either the seniors forgot what they had known when they entered as freshmen, the report concludes, ``or -- more ominously -- were mistaught by their professors." And where was this civic dumbing-down concentrated? Overwhelmingly at the most selective universities among the 50 surveyed, including Yale, Duke, Georgetown, Brown, and Berkeley.

Here's a copy of the ISI's report: www.americancivicliteracy.org

 

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Dumbing down democracy

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist  |  October 1, 2006

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/10/01/dumbing_down_democracy/

THE ``FOR DUMMIES" series of self-improvement books, which began with ``DOS for Dummies" in 1991, comprises more than 1,000 titles. You name it, John Wiley & Sons publishes it -- ``Mutual Funds for Dummies," ``Breastfeeding for Dummies," ``Formula One Racing for Dummies," ``John Paul II for Dummies," even ``Parrots for Dummies." And more are always on the way. The publisher ``cranks out 200 new Dummies titles a year," reports The New York Times Book Review. ``At that rate there may soon be more Dummies books out there than dummies to read them."

If only. Unfortunately, the national stockpile of dummies appears to be in no danger of running dry.

The latest evidence of the dummification of American life comes from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a venerable organization that promotes classical values in higher education. As part of a program to strengthen the understanding of America's history and political institutions -- what it calls ``civic literacy" -- ISI commissioned a survey of more than 14,000 randomly selected freshmen and seniors at 50 four-year colleges and universities nationwide. The students were given 60 multiple-choice questions, testing their knowledge of US history, government, foreign affairs, and economics. The results were atrocious.

The average freshman flunked the test, correctly answering only 52 percent of the questions. The average score among seniors was equally pathetic: 53 percent. On a traditional grading scale, scores like those would get an F. Even at the colleges whose students scored highest, the average senior score was below 70 percent -- a D+ at best.