Second Consecutive Civics Study (2007) Still Shows American College Students Failing Civic Literacy

Intercollegiate Studies Institute ^ | Sept 18, 2007

[SirLinksalot]

First of all, there were basically no core requirements except two years of a foreign language, a writing course and 6 hours of a science or math. Then I transferred to the School of Architecture. I took no history at all. I entered college in 1972 and I attended UVA.

A few thoughts :

1) It seems that if there's a place where everyone should be taught good civics, it has to be in HIGH SCHOOL.

2) An excuse for this low scores can be made to say that --- the more concentrated you are in your own course of study (unrelated to US History, Civics or the American Economy), the more likely you are to forget what you learned in school. Hence, students from low scoring schools in top ranked colleges (e.g. the IVIES) might be so concentrated on solving bits and bytes problems, equations, electrons, human anatomy and the periodic table that such things as "Separation of Powers" never even cross their minds anymore.

3) The interesting phenomenon that can be observed from the study is this -- NEGATIVE LEARNING. One would at least expect a Senior not to unlearn the things he/she knows when he/she entered college. But the study seems to show that the higher they go, the lesser they know regarding civics. I note with dismay for instance the apalling knowledge displayed regarding judicial powers in this country ( no wonder we have judges legislating from the bench ). I think the PC and liberal influence in most of our campuses has a lot to do with this.

4) Finally, even if students were to be so focused on their respective courses in order to become a career architect, engineer, biochemist, doctor or what-have-you, they are still CITIZENS of this country. You would at least expect these educated kids to KNOW the principles and basis behind the foundation of United States of America.

[SirLinksalot]

I.S.I. is excellent.

Yes, they also publish one of the best college guides in the country ( well reviewed by many publications ).

[ZeitgeistSurfer]

I got 95% and could kick myself for missing the three questions I did. I think overall the quiz was excellent and something like this should be required for citizenship.

[twigs]

Excellent thoughts. I agree that high school is the place to learn civics and history. My daughter went to a Christian high school and had a much better high-school education that I ever had. I had decent history classes which she also had, but she had much superior English Lit classes. I think that high schools should teach History and Civics a LOT more carefully.

[nonsporting]

By design, the left rules.

The Left has no intension of teaching real American History and Civics, for to do so would be counterproductive to their revolutionary purpose--to subvert our culture of freedom and replace it with a communist state.

This revolution has been a long time coming--middle 19th century. When the people are disamred, they can complete (or try to) their plans.

[burzum]

NO COLLEGE EARNED BETTER THAN A “D+”

The letter grading system is meaningless to evaluate this test. It all depends on how difficult the test was written. If the test was written to be very easy would you say that it is amazing that every college earned an A?

I have had many physics and engineering tests where *nobody* scored higher than 60% and where the class mean was 40%. This doesn't mean that the class didn't understand the physics. It was just that the test was written extremely hard. These kind of tests weed out the people who don't know anything in the subject. If you don't study hard for one of those tests you will score 10%, and since it was graded on a curve you will get hammered ruthlessly.

I have also had to write tests when I was operating nuclear reactors in the Navy so that we had some expected average score and some expected failure rate. If too few people (fully qualified nuclear operators) were failing then the tests were too easy and they needed to be rewritten If too many were failing then the tests were too hard. And if the command didn't pay attention to this fact then outside of ship monitoring would.

[SirLinksalot]

It all depends on how difficult the test was written. If the test was written to be very easy would you say that it is amazing that every college earned an A?

Did you get a chance to look at this test at all ( see the link provided in post #7 above ) ?

I thought it was a reasonably fair test that determines your general knowledge of civics and American History.

I personally think students who are serious about their role as an American citizen should score above the 75% mark.

[TChris]

I scored 88%...

83.33% here

[SirLinksalot]

I bet the average FReeper would score higher than the average of any of the universities tested.

[burzum]

I thought it was a reasonably fair test that determines your general knowledge of civics and American History.

The civics and American history part is fine. But about 20 of the 60 questions were devoted to philosophy, microeconomics, and macroeconomics. You may think that these should be part of civics, but I don't think that is necessarily reasonable. I would certainly argue that philosophy and economics have had significant effects on how our government is shaped, but I would not think a citizen is lacking in his or her civic duties by knowing only American history and the design of our government. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't expect 75% of Americans have a clue who St Thomas Aquinas is or what Keynesian economics is. I would expect them to be able to describe the more significant cases the Supreme Court has heard, how the Constitution is structured, what the Declaration of Independence says, what the major political alliances that the US has participated in were, and how the different wars that we have participated in were started and concluded.

I am not one to argue that civics and history are being successfully taught in our schools. In one memorable exchange with a nuclear mechanic on my old submarine I asked him the rough dates of when the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, and World War II were fought. He got one right (I'll let you guess which one). Many of the dates he gave were off by more than a century. Sad. But he was still a good mechanic. These things were never taught to him in school and he never cared for them either way. But he could tell you how many turns per inch of lockwire you would need for some arbitrary sized nut or how to mechanically start up a turbine generator. If you think this is bad, most sailors I met couldn't tell me what happened at the Battle of Midway nor who Lord Nelson was! I should note that most of them had a decent knowledge in civics and history. There were some that were extremely knowledgeable in civics that could cite every battle in every war we fought, almost repeat lines of the Constitution verbatim, and describe the intricacies of many of the treaties we have signed (like SALT II). It is from talks with those sailors that I now know what I do about American history and the Constitution. But even they would have looked at me odd if I started asking who St. Thomas Aquinas or Alexis de Tocqueville was (except perhaps the officers who had courses in philosophy).

[the lastbestlady]

This would be a no-brainer for the average Hillsdale student. (I get to brag since I am an Alumna) :)

[Southack]

Considering your online moniker, you need to learn to link more...

Oh, I only missed the correct answer to #21. 59 others were correct.

[cynwoody]

#27 doesn’t belong on a “civic literacy” test.

[SirLinksalot]

The surprising thing is this -— some school administrators are painting the result as POSITIVE. Even if you are ranked first or second in the test results, a D+ average for your students should not be cause for satisfaction.

---

See here (from the Pennsylvania area) :

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/cityregion/s_528201.html

Grove City students shine in history knowledge
By Bill Zlatos
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, September 19, 2007

American college students as a group are as likely to flunk a basic history exam as pass it, but a study released Tuesday found those at Grove City College know more than most.

The study for the Washington, D.C.-based Intercollegiate Studies Institute shows the nation’s freshmen and seniors at 50 colleges and universities scored an average of just more than 50 percent — or an F — on a basic American history test.

Among Pennsylvania schools, Grove City seniors ranked second nationally with 67.3 percent correct; the University of Pennsylvania, eighth, with 63.5 percent; and Carnegie Mellon University, 20th, with 56.9 percent.

“Schools are not focusing much on civic literacy,” concluded Ken Dautrich, a public policy professor at the University of Connecticut, who conducted the study. “They’re focusing more on math, science, specialization and business degrees.”

“Grove City is attracting students into their program that are already better informed on the civic education scale,” he said.
William P. Anderson, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Grove City, said he was pleased by the results.

“It shows our general education curriculum and the way we teach students history and political philosophy prepares them for citizenship,” he said.

Students answered 60 questions on American politics, U.S. history, American economy and foreign relations.

Joe Trotter, head of the history department at Carnegie Mellon, attributed its low score to adding the history of women, blacks and other ethnic and racial groups to the curriculum.

“The result of that is some of the things that we considered conventional knowledge has had to share a place with the knowledge that very few people knew anything about 30 years ago,” he said.

The study showed that students attending Ivy League and other high-priced schools had some of the lowest scores. In addition, students across the nation showed little gain in their knowledge of history between their freshmen and senior years — an average of 3.8 points.

Grove City seniors improved by 3.6 points, Carnegie Mellon by 2.8 points and Penn by 0.8 points.

Trotter said Carnegie Mellon is training undergraduates to become historians themselves. He said its students would have scored better if they had been tested on an expanded view of history.

Students at Grove City must take six courses or 18 credits on the history of civilization. Dautrich said freshmen there scored so high that they “had less room to move up.”

[SirLinksalot]

I got the chance to go to the Democratic Underground ( the left wing version of Free Republic ). Apparently a lot of them took the test as well. Not scoring very well compared to Freepers. See here for a glimpse :

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2995426