Posted on 09/19/2007 9:27:58 AM PDT by WinOne4TheGipper
WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- Harvard, even though it scored the highest, was among elite U.S. colleges where students proved dismal in their knowledge of civics and history, a report said.
The non-profit Intercollegiate Studies Institute analyzed scores of a test given to 14,419 freshmen and seniors at 50 U.S. colleges last fall, USA Today reported Tuesday.
Overall, the freshmen tested averaged 50.4 percent on a civic literacy test, while the seniors tested averaged 54.2 percent.
Seniors tested at Harvard had the highest overall average at 69.6 percent, nearly 6 points higher than its freshmen but still a D-plus, said the ISI report.
A Harvard senior was the only student among the 14,419 tested to get 100 percent correct.
Yale had the highest scoring freshman at 68.94 percent with freshmen at Princeton, Duke and Cornell also out scoring seniors who took the test, the report said.
William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told USA Today students have fewer civics requirements because the value of higher education more often is defined by knowledge of economics.
You've missed my point. While the Constitution establishes a Republic, most people read their own idea about what a republic is into that. What kind of a republic does the Constitution establish? Even among the Founders, there was quite a bit of debate about that very question. Generally speaking, the Constitution establishes a "liberal republic" (18th century definition of "liberal") such as was advocated by the colonial writer using the pseudonym Cato, as well as by Jefferson, etc. Thus, it IS an "indirect democracy", contra VWRCmember's claim above, because while containing republican elements of separation of powers and an implied emphasis on civic duty to be successful, our Constitution also very definitely established a liberal scheme for individual liberties, especially with the addition of the BoR, which necessarily implies a broad scheme of citizen participation, though through election and representation, rather than direct citizen control of policy and government (i.e. "direct" or "referendum" democracy). Democracy simply means "rule by the people", which is what we had with the Constitution, albeit in an indirect way.
The Constitution certainly did NOT set up a pure or "classical" republican (though again, I emphasise that there were elements of these in our founding system), which were more often oligarchies or aristocracies than anything else.
Of course, the High Schools and Colleges are so busy “teaching” PC bull$hit and socialist theories that they don’t have time to cover the truly important material.
Wonder if this person might have been home-schooled or sent to a private school where the tuition was almost as high as Harvard.
My step-granddaughter had to do two reports last year in the first semester of her Junior year of high school.
Subject 1: Martin Luther King, Jr.
Subject 2: Global Warming.
When she told me I said I had two questions for her.
Question 1. Do you know who Thomas Jefferson was?
Answer: Who?
Question 2. Do you know what photosynthesis is?
Answer: What?
I strongly suggested to my Son-in-law that he seriously consider sending her to private school.
90%. 54. The engineers are doing all right.
Fifty-seven isn’t bad, I should think. I completely bungled the Monroe Doctrine question. Oh well.
Thanks for the post and the link. My results:
You answered 54 out of 60 correctly — 90.00 %
Average score for this quiz during September: 74.3%
Average score since September 18, 2007: 74.3%
One of my incorrect responses was on #27: Which statement is a common argument against the claim that “man cannot know things”?
Can somebody educate me on the link of this question to general civics and historical literacy?
55/60
91.67%
I took the test and scored 80 percent. I am very disappointed with myself, I really expected to do better.
The quiz does not even have the correct answer in the choices. The Constitution of the United States explicitly established a REPUBLICAN form of government. I assume the “correct” answer to the “C. Indirect democracy” from the quizmaster’s perspective.
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I did the same thing, my wife was looking over my shoulder and I told her that the correct answer was not given but they obviously though that c was correct.
I loved comment #17, noting that the quiz stressed Western/capitalist/free-market ideals.
As if the teaching of US history would stress something else!
I am pleased that I did pretty good. I got 53 out of 60 = 88%!!!
It did help that daughter’s homeschooling is in the Andrew Jackson phase, where I don’t remember learning that in the government schools at all.
“Which statement is a common argument against the claim that “man cannot know things”? Can somebody educate me on the link of this question to general civics and historical literacy?”
I just viewed that as a logic question. You can’t know that you cannot know, unles you know THAT, making the proposition false.
The answer followed the K.I.S.S. rule I follow in life.
Never heard it before then.
It is the job of every citizen in a republic, to have that job.
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Amen, and we are failing miserably at it!
“same score, not bad for a bartender :)”
To be expected. As a bartender, you have much greater contact and influence with politicians than an average person. So, of course you know your politics.
Hell, Ted Kennedy probably has you in his will.
Better than me, squeeked by with 80% but it’s been 20 years since I was in college.
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I did the same but it’s been 47 years since I was in High School.
I figured most liberals would miss that one.
From the looks of this thread, thankfully “we” aren’t. I wonder what the score would be if we picked an average person on the street and had him/her take the quiz?
That is a pretty hard test if you ask me. I only did well because of FREE REPUBLIC and FRiends on here. I am serious about that. I did really well in the government questions and economic questions which we discuss a lot on here, but I did really poorly on the history which we don’t cover as much. My MBA from George Washington did not help me one bit on this test.
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