College Seniors No More Knowledgeable Than 1950s High School Grads

CNSNEWS.com ^ | 12/19/02 | Scott Hogenson

[Hila]

True, many of the 50's and 60's served in Nam and we bless them for that. Many of this generation will go on to use their hearts and brains for good, in spite of the terrible curricula and new world over influences. I believe there have always been good and poor students, motivated and lazy, outstanding and mediocre. It depends on the parenting, not the "village".

[Lizavetta]

I also discovered at the time that my son had an abysmal knowledge of geography (he was in high school)

My Danish grandmother almost had a stroke when, while talking about China to my teenaged sister, my sister said, "Where's China?" This was in 1980.

[SoCal Pubbie]

To everyone who wants to glorify the fifties as some sort of paradise, please don't kid yourself. Every generation seems to think that their time was the best, and the whole world is going to pot. I'm sure the GenXer's will be saying the same thing a few years from now. But let's look at reality, and not some rose colored image of the past. I was born in 1957 so I'm too young to remember the fifties, but I get a good idea from my older brothers. My father and my mother, who just died two weeks ago, were both born in 1915 and my late grandmother something like 1881 so I do have a pretty good historical frame of reference.

Yes, a lot of things were better for everyone, including kids, back in the day. But no one wants to remember the bad things. Like the premature babies who routinely survive today that wouldn't have a chance in 1955. Or smallpox and polio. I had a relative who walked hunched over with a withered leg, because he had it in the fifties. What about malaria, or the thousands who would die from untreatable cancers we can battle today?

Would you like to be a middle class black today, or in 1958? Yes, you're going to scream about how the welfare state has destroyed the black family but was it really better to have separate drinking fountains mandated by the state?

My point is not to denigrate those times. No one gets angrier at movies like Pleasantville that try to make the time seem uptight and boring than I do. I just don't think it helps to promote a return to a time before MTV as the panacea for today's problems. Didn't you learn anything from your parents who thought Elvis was going to destroy your youth?

[goodnesswins]

Let's see.....and what was significant about that time period? There was NO TV to speak of.

[lonestar]

I just remembered something interesting about the Little Rock 50s grad. His aunt was Senator Fulbright's secretary for many, many years--until he died.

[Nita Nuprez]

Thank you for your compliment. ;-)

[goodnesswins]

The Good Old Days (Good, Sentimental, Read)
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Posted on 12/12/2002 7:27 AM PST by frmrda

Can't Believe You Made It,

If you lived as a child in the 40's, 50's, 60's or 70's.
Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have...

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. Not to mention hitchhiking to town as a young kid!)

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a Tfew times we learned to solve the problem.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. Our parents knew that all the neighbors would watch out for all the kids. No cell phones. Unthinkable. We played dodgeball and sometimes the ball would really hurt. We got cut and broke bones and broke teeth, and there were no law suits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame, but us. Remember accidents?

We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda but we were never overweight... we were always outside playing. We shared one grape soda with four friends, from one bottle and no one died from this.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, video games at all, 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, Personal Computers, Internet chat rooms .. we had friends. We went outside and found them. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door,or rung the bell or just walked in and talked to them.

Imagine such a thing. Without asking a parent! By ourselves! Out there in the cold cruel world! Without a guardian. How did we do it?

[Bahbah]

LOL. How can we determine which it is? I do not want to stir up any Psycho_Bunnies. I am jealous that you can sing.

[Spiff]

Thank you for the link. Just read the questions and took a crack at them. Missed one. (I didn't recall that Waterloo was fought in Belgium.) In 15 minutes I've planned next week's column, unless events overwhelm me and I have to go with something else

You and me both. I only missed the Belgium one too. I knew of the Battle of Waterloo but was never taught - beyond that it was in Waterloo - where the battle actually happened. Besides, since then there's been a number of name and border changes to the nations in Europe. My European History is a little rusty.

[The Westerner]

You are so right. My grandfather dropped out of school in the 6th grade, but wrote elegantly like so many of his generation. By the way, one of his first jobs was working for Edison in his workshop in N.J. In those days, one didn't need a degree to get a job.

[conservativemusician]

It was the same for a lot of us.

It pained me to see my father take my youngest brother up to the school to ride his bicycle because it was too dangerous for him to ride around town by himself as I did when I was 7.

[weegee]

Nothing is better than a good command of the English language.

A college degree is better than nothing.

Therefore, a college degree is better than a good command of the English language.

[PeoplesRepublicOfWashington]

This isn't that surprising. In the 50s being a college graduate meant something. Today, not only does almost anyone get into college, almost anyone gets through college. And there's no shortage of morons with PhDs running around these days.

[warchild9]

In the past few years, I've picked through a large sample of new college graduates trying to fill technical positions, and the greater proportion are immature illiterates. It's EXTREMELY frustrating when society's supposed cream-of-the-crop are lazy, sports-addled babies. And if you give me time, I'll really let you know what I think!

[weegee]

Increasingly we are turning out students who are totally divorced from the history of our culture. They make decisions based on contemporary trends, without understanding the historical background on many issues. This is dangerous, because it means a significant portion of the population can be manipulated by celebrities who purport to be "experts."

[Psycho_Bunny]

I don't know. I've always assumed that when "The Messiah" is printed on a score, it's probably the most likely name for a couple reasons; first and foremost because "ensemble" music copyists tend to be anal about such things - one mistake could ruin a page that took an hour to set.  Scoring is a b#tch.  

Another reason is that often, the most popular scores are the photocopies of 1800s to early 1900s hand-set scores which are not that many generations removed from the composer.  (The most beautiful score I've ever seen is my first printing, hand-set "Also Sprach Zarathustra" - almost any page of which, could be framed and hung.)

I know there has to be a picture of the title page to this piece, in Handel's pen, but I've never seen one.

[Semaphore Heathcliffe]

Education majors (29%) were the most likely to give an incorrect answer.

The education majors I knew in college were generally women looking to find a hubby.

[jjm2111]

I got them all right now, but I'll be honest-I'm not sure if I knew Waterloo was in Belgium when I graduated H.S. in 1980.

I'm a recent college grad and I got that one wrong too. Picked "The Netherlands". That and I didn't have a clue who Florence Nightengale was either.

Most people are amazingly deficient in general knowledge. I have to credit my parents though. They always took me to museums, we traveled, they gave me big National Geographic books when I was a kid.

[SamAdams76]

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.

I agree with that. Literature, science and math are still very important subjects and should not be given short shrift just because we have computers.

Literature is especially a hot-button issue with me. For the past 30 years, literature has all but fallen by the wayside. Teachers now let the students pick the books they read (and they usually choose Harry Potter or some other lightweight children or young teen book). Not that there's anything wrong with kids reading books they want to read. But they should be forced to read in school the classics. I don't like the word "forced" but there is no other way around it. A kid is just not going to pick up a book by Dickens, Shakespeare or Homer on their own.

I think another obstacle to reading good literature in school is the political correctness that has run amuck. Many schools have even banned Huckleberry Finn because of the racial epithets used. Well I think kids should know how blacks were treated and perceived in earlier times and we shouldn't try to sugar-coat it.

[NittanyLion]

Well, I am an old-school type person. Certain things MUST be memorized (multiplication tables, points on the compass, capitals of states and nations, etc.) BEFORE you put it anything in context. This is why the early years of education used to be consumed with memorization...so that the later years could concentrate on critical thinking.

Definitely true. The problem I see is, that critical thinking is not being developed at any level.

More to your point, folks would do well to make their kids understand that not all learning is "fun". Memorization is demanding work, but it's also necessary.