Posted on 12/19/2002 3:08:50 AM PST by kattracks
(CNSNews.com) - The college seniors of today have no better grasp of general knowledge than the high school graduates of almost half a century ago, according to the results of a new study.
The average of correct responses for modern college seniors on a series of questions assessing "general cultural knowledge" was 53.5 percent compared with 54.5 percent of high school graduates in 1955, according to a survey by Zogby International.
The Zogby poll of 401 randomly selected college seniors was conducted in April for the Princeton, N.J.-based National Association of Scholars and released Wednesday.
"The average amount of knowledge that college seniors had was just about the same as the average amount of knowledge that high school graduates had back in the 1950s," said NAS President Stephen H. Balch.
Balch noted that the high school grads of half a century ago performed better than today's college seniors on history questions, while contemporary students fared better on questions covering art and literature, with no appreciable difference on geography questions.
The questions asked in the April poll by Zogby were virtually the same as questions asked by the Gallup Organization in 1955, with a few questions being slightly modified to reflect history.
"The questions were just about identical, as identical as we could make them," said Balch. "In most cases, they were absolutely identical."
Balch attributed the stagnation of performance on general knowledge questions to several factors, including a decreased emphasis on general knowledge in high school, placing colleges and universities in the position of having to fill academic gaps among students entering college.
"This is fundamental knowledge that everyone should have and if your students are being admitted without it, then that only reinforces the need for you to take general education seriously," Balch said.
But Balch said he didn't consider such actions to be remedial in nature, noting that "the remedial problems have to do with students not being able to write or read at the eighth grade level and still getting into college. There are many institutions in which that's a difficulty. You have people who just don't have the skills let alone the knowledge."
Even though the NAS study raises questions about the caliber of general education offered in high schools, colleges and universities also bear some responsibility, Balch said.
"I think it probably has a lot to do with the dumbing down of curriculum, both at the college and high school level," said Balch. "It looks good, certainly, to say 'more people are graduating from college,' but is there any real intellectual yield from it?"
Also part of the problem is that many colleges are placing less emphasis on liberal arts education in favor of more specialized education geared toward specific career paths, which Balch said isn't necessarily in the best interest of students or society.
"I think these results, which don't seem to show a great deal of value-added in the general cultural knowledge domain - I think these results are quite interesting and disappointing," said Balch. "We would hope that the college students of today would have done a good deal better than the high school students of the past."
Also contributing to the trend is an easing of college admissions standards. While Balch doesn't advocate a return to standards requiring competency in Greek or Latin, he does say colleges should "insist that the student coming have basic areas of knowledge."
A solid background in general knowledge, Balch said, is "very important both for good citizenship and, for many people at least, for a happy and interesting life," by providing students with what Balch called "cultural furniture that allows them to be better citizens."
Click here to read the general knowledge questions.
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You saint.
A symptom of the problem, methinks.
As for having more "general knowledge" we were all pretty good at that too. Computers don't necessarily make you smarter, but reading FR every day does.
Jesus (who is Black of course) I deseve that A+ just for that alone.
How will they understand what population trends in Asia mean? IOW, what will they do with the charts they create in Excel, and how will they interpret them? As far as RAM, what purpose will the RAM they find out they have in their computer have? Will it go toward something productive or playing games?
These computer skills aren't learned in school. They are learned by those kids who have a computer at home and *might* get very basic instruction at school, but make application of that instruction time and time again for assignments and non-curricular stuff. I think the point of this study is even the most technically literate person will have a hard time making sense of things around him if he isn't well educated in history, reading, writing, and math.
There is a reason schools should require the reading of Homer's Illiad and Odeysey (among others); there is a reason students should memorize Shakespeare, Poe, and even Walt Williams; there is a reason why students graduating high school should be competent in science and math. It may or may not make them better computer programmers, but it will make them more productive citizens.
Well, I am old, in the 30s, if you did not write, you did not pass.
Whoa... Cars burned wood then right? ;)
The instruction of writing probably followed the path many of the other less empirical fields did. I don't have much of a problem reading the hand writing of my grandparents (except for arthritis working on one of them), and most of the scrawl I deal with is from people who learned in around my same timeframe of learning -+10 years (I'm 37).
Its telling that my moms father can literally create highly intricate machinery from raw metal, and functional vehicles from the ground up and I don't believe he even graduated from high school. You'd think he had a mechanical engineering degree from all the micrometers and other esoteric tools in his shop and the speed at which he can do math in his head or on a scrap of cardboard (he did apprentice, and was a union millwright).
I often thank God for old people (particularly my grandparents, all of whom are still alive). If it weren't for them I'd probably be 90% dumber than where I'm at now...
Please define that generalization.
The kid of the 50s knew the neighbors. The kid in 2002 on the computer playing interactive games with people around the world is less likely to know, or care, who his next-door neighbor is. He is less likely to be able to organize and play a simple game like "Hide and Seek" much less a ball game. He is more likely to die early from inactivity.
Obesity in children was not a problem in the 50s. We knew how to run and skip. We rode bicycles. In the summer we went swimming in the creek (we had pools; preferred the creek) played baseball; in winter, football. Boys and girls played all of it. Before government mandate. Two of our boys went on to play in college, one was the starting half-back in the Sugar Bowl as a soph and went on to play third base for the Cleveland Indians. Today he is president of a local bank.
Kids today don't have the common sense to know they're ruining their hearing with boom-boxes that rattle house windows when they drive down the streets.
I would take Elvis over Eminem anyday, any year, past or future!
I live in a small Texas town and thinking about the kids I played with growing up I realized another thing in common. We all graduated from high school and many moved on to other places with our lives and careers, etc. Now, almost 50 years later, so many have come "home." Maybe that's what was special about the 50s. We had and felt our "roots."
Heh--I "did" have quality penmanship before taking mechanical drawing in college (before switching from mechanical engineering to chemistry as a major). Unfortunately, that ruined me, as I now "printscript" most everything.
In the early 50s most boys had crewcuts or "flat-tops." In the mid-fifties, "Rock Around the Clock" time, they let the sides and back grow and brushed hair on sides back, going straight down in the back where the sides met. Hard to explain. It was called "duck tails". The "hot" colors were pink and navy blue--together. I gave my dad pink socks for Christmas--to wear with his navy suit. When I complained that he had not worn them, he pointed out to me when he did. He had taken off his cowboy boots to show me he was wearing his pink socks.
I've sang it every year since I was 14. Every score I've ever seen says the same thing as this one.
Take a look at High School photos from back then. From 1950 until about 1955 most boys had longer pompadour type haircuts. From about 1956 on, the hair became much shorter...crewcuts and flattops were prevalent among the jocks. The haircuts you mention were worn primarily by the "hoods" but the jocks and the other boys mostly had crewcuts or flattops from about 1956 on.
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