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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That's right. It was during the latter part of the '50s that things started to go wrong. The 40s and early '50s kids were "depression babies". Not many of them and they (we) got good educations and have generally done well. There were 12 in my HS graduating class.
All hell broke loose during the '60s. Despite a thousand books on that subject I still don't know if anyone really knows why?
Click on my name to see the car I was driving in 1951-52 as a HS Senior.
I find that hard to believe, considering the Korean war started June 25th, 1950 and ended July 27, 1953. I had many friends who graduated from about 1955 through 1959 go in and then serve in Vietnam (I graduated in 1958.) Without doing any research on breakdown, the US was sending men to Vietnam from about 1960 on, as I recall.
I guess I'll have to go and dig around in the numbers. Now you did it, LOL!
116 years in a series of Wars between France and England from 1337 to 1453 so the answer is NOT 100 years even though from the name of the War it would seem to be. Great trick question for folks.
Another great trick question since the answer is November. At the time of the Russian Revolution they were still on the Julian Calendar so their dates were earlier. Later Russia switched to the Gregorian Calendar which put them in synch with us so it was celebrated in November.
Sam Adams, you yourself have a poor grasp of history! The fifties were not a time of pot-smoking, acid-dropping, and hip-hopping. It was the first generation in American history whose students, born of working parents, could study and grasp the opportunity that higher education offered.
Can you imagine? Tuition at the University of California school system was little more than $100 a year. State schools like San Jose State and Fresno State, were just a little more. The explosion of junion colleges (not the ersatz community colleges of today) were affordable, and were often the preferred means of beginning the route to a BA. Thus the fifties generation was the most highly educated group of young people in American history.
The difference between then and now is that those students cherished their opportunity to advance. Today's kids think higher education is a right, as is the right not to fail. It is a significant difference.
Oh, and by the way, a "student loan" was unheard of, and "working one's way through college" was so common it was taken for granted.
PK - HS1952, BA1956, MA1967, PhD1971 with no Student Loans, no debts, some scholarships. Grew up "poor". Retired young. The '50s strikes again!
Not according to cynicom. He claims that I am just some phony upstart whippersnapper. Take a look at the earlier posts to see what I mean.
I think you had to be there to understand it. Some here think they know far more about the '50s than they will ever know, good testimonial to the theme of this thread.
The '50s were in some ways tough transitional times from pre-war to postwar, but there was an honest innocence and ambition combined with a personal integrity that I don't see today.
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