College Seniors No More Knowledgeable Than 1950s High School Grads

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

[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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[goodnesswins]

YES! I worked in berry and bean fields during the summers...from dawn to, well, about 3pm. But, it was fun, and I was productive. (And, I worked in Yellowstone one summer at age 17, which, now kids cannot do.)

[Fury]

Having been a kid in the 50's, I agree. It is so hard to explain to my children the freedom of the time. The only thing in this world I had to fear was snakes and my parents. I don't remember even thinking about the bomb

Outstanding point. Kids today have many more "entities" bidding for their time. TV, Internet, etc are very much "in your face". There are so many folks who want to convey messages to teens. Add to that many single parent households, where there may not be a parent to help put these messages in context and it becomes information overload...

[goodnesswins]

"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.."

Thank you so much for saying that.....we refuse to "pander" to our 9 year old grandson and indulge his every want. We want him to be "educated" which he will not get in his public school. We correct his English (brung, gots?) and now are buying him a few shares of stock so we can study the markets. We do encourage his interests, right now snakes, fishing, and aquarium fish through books and activities. We refuse to provide him with more gameboys and idiotic toys. Your statement will help us continue.

[aruanan]

Really, those must have been some talented High School Students[sic] in the 50's. How were their computer and bio-tech skills?

Ha ha ha. Come on, bio-tech skills. Give us a break. I'm at one of the top universities in the world and I see the bio-tech skills of the cream of the crop coming here as undergraduates. A well-read student who does nothing on a computer is still the intellectual superior of someone who just spends all his time writing code (or surfing the web, the major portion of the time spent by those you would describe as having "computer skills"). Oh, those 1950's graduates also knew when and when not to capitalize.

[MARTIAL MONK]

What was that pink stuff called that made flat tops flat?

I'm too young to know that you're talking about Butch Wax. You'll have to ask someone else.

[MIgramma]

I beg your pardon! I had the dubious pleasure of working for the past two summers as a field botanist for the Forest Service with a couple of those college grads.

Personally I did graduate in the 50s and am acknowledged to be perhaps the second-best field botanist in this half of the State of Michigan. And, might I add, SELF taught.

One of these college grads could correctly adentify maybe 15% of the flora we encountered.

The other wonder boy only correctly identified ONE plant all summer!

Not only wasn't he able to identify plants, which is what he supposedly was getting paid for... He couldn't spell beyond the second-grade level.

For example, pretty was rendered pity and grass as gras.

When asked to write up a detailed description of a site, he comes up with "this is a very PITY place. Nuff said? I guess that nowadays you just pays your money and they hand you a diploma. Oh yeah, they were both fairly proficient with computers, especially the chat rooms.

[OldEagle]

"Yeah, but can a 1950s high school grad create an Excel spreadsheet to show population trends in Asia or determine how much additional RAM is required in a given computer to run Windows XP?"

THIS ONE CAN.

Comparing education now to the 1950s is meaningless. There were far fewer distractions for a student in the 1950s so it should come as no surprise that a student from that era has more "book knowledge." On the other hand, students of today tend to be more worldly. My sons regularly communicate with kids from around the world on computer and when they are doing homework, they literally have the world at their fingertips (via the Internet). A Google search will turn up far more information on an obscure subject than a textbook of the 1950s.

SO, HOW DID THEY DO ON THE TEST?

"And what did the students of the 1950s end up doing with their lives? Smoking dope, protesting the war and listening to acid rock. Well, many of them did, anyway."

WRONG AGAIN!
NEVER TOUCHED DRUGS. DID DO KOREA AND VIETNAM.

[Thank You Rush]

You are right! The guys went to Korea and the girls went to college or to work. Who had ever heard the word "dope" or "acid rock"? Unwed and pregnant? It happened but it certainly wasn't anything to be proud of. Shame was a word that everyone was familiar with. (Bill Buckley says we can end a sentence with a preposition in spite of our 50's education).

It's proof of the decline of the country that there are actually people who think no one alive today actually grew up without being part of the awful 60's. We were too busy working and raising families in the 60's to be part of that nonsense. That's why we had trouble accepting that our country during the 90's was in the hands of that 60's crowd and who do we have coming up in the future to run it? Scary thought!

[F16Fighter]

"By picking the right metrics I can make todays college grads look dumber that 1900's seventh graders.

At the rate the NEA has dumbed down it's students these days, make that 1900's fifth graders.

[conservativemusician]

Very good!

Not many know that they were still on the Julian calendar in the early part of the 20th century, putting them some 20 odd days behind.

[conservativemusician]

I was in elementary school in the late 60's and early 70's and I'd almost forgotten that " kneel, head down, against the wall, coat over your head" stuff.

As if it would have done us any good.LOL

[lonestar]

I had forgotten about those games. Did you go snipe hunting with your boyfriend?

[jimfree]

I missed two of the twelve. I don't know how many I would have gotten right at the time of my HS graduation and my first college graduation. I'm guessing something between 8 and 10.

[lonestar]

I'm old enough you made me wet my pants!

[SamAdams76]

Your reading comprehension is not too good though.

[PaulKersey]

The girlfriends, some of whom you still know today.

I married one of them at 20. She was 19. We have lots of kids and grandkids and twins are on the way (Grandkids that is...) That's the way it was done, and it has LOTS to say for itself. Wife never had to work, and still doesn't. But come Christmas with Grandkids coming you'd never know it!

[LonghornFreeper]

This report found what it wanted to find. It all comes down to what you consider to be valuabe general knowledge. I (a current college freshman) could answer all but one of the questions (I honestly couldn't care less who composed "the Messiah"), but I consider these to be more trivia questions than anything else. The exception to this is history, especially that of America. I agree that schools are not doing a good enough job of teaching the history of our nation, and when they do teach it political correctness usually rules. I am obviously biased by the fact that as an aerospace engineering major, knowing Shakespeare doesn't get planes off the ground. But some things I think "should" be general knowledge for high school seniors, such as higher mathematics and computer skills, are not included in the questions. If a student chooses to read literature (I do), or to listen to classical music (I do this also, but don't pay attention to who composed what), that is great, but I don't see it as a necessity. If I read Tolkein or Tom Clancy, and you read Dickens, I don't see you as a superior, more well-rounded human being. What is "high culture" and what is not is personal opinion and nothing more. I would much prefer a high school grad who can do elementary calculus and knows what DDR RAM stands for than one who can roll out random facts on command. The author of this study appears to be against "specializing" but he fails to realize that knowing who Florence Nightengale is doesn't train nurses, and knowing who proposed the theory of relativity doesn't allow one to understand and apply it. Specialization is required in order to accomplish anything. We have enough liberal arts majors (i.e. Walmart employees) already, bring on the specialization.

[JimVT]

Interesting bio, Ma'am.

I'm a senior too...now partly-retired.

I left Democratic RI in 1952 for Korea, came back in '56, worked at IDL in NYC for a few years then in the 70s my work took me to the Liberal Republic of MA first (I'll tell my Teddy Kennedy story below*) and I ended up in VT for the past 30 years.

When I got here it was still a fairly strong conservative state but soon the likes of Bernie Sanders infiltrated and because the business community (with which I was involved) wasn't paying attention the socialist-communists got a leg up in Burlington and the Dems turned socialistic with them. What a mess.

There may be hope in that we finally elected a Rep. Gov. and Lt. Gov. and may keep the House of Reps in our hands.

Gov-elect Jim Douglas campaigned on a pro-business slate and looks like he is going to keep his word to tone down the out-of-state enviro-freaks who have been trying to lock the gates for 20 years which has helped the state to lose 7-8000 jobs in the past year.

Meanwhile we are still paying $90,000 a year for our out-going Governor to play "I wanna be President but I'll take a high-paying political job with the Dems." Howard Dean can't even get nearby NH Dems to look favorably on him. He came in last in a Dem. poll of Pres. wannabes.

One of many things that bother me about the education of our kids today is the "Scholastic Honors" scam.

Last time I checked with our local high school about 25 to 30 per cent of the kids were graduating with some sort of "honors.'

As I recall my school days the percentages were much lower.

When I tried to get comparative info on graduates from 10 plus years ago, I got stonewalled with a lot of BS about not having the data available.

I haven't given up. I really think the standards have been lowered so the teachers can look like they're doing a better job. Having met a bunch of HS grads, I don't think they are.

*About Kennedy:

During my first month as the new executive of a business organization in western MA., I was picked to introduce Senator Fat Boy at a luncheon meeting.

Just after lunch and before my intro I got up to use the facility and Teddy grabs my arm and he says to me he says:

"Hey, Jimmy, you gonna finish them poh-day-does."

[msru]

Specialization is required in order to accomplish anything.

That is one of the best posts on this thread (the entire post), in my opinion. I agree with the specialization assertion you made.
I majored in accounting in college. When conducting my job search, the help-wanted ads specifically required a college degree, usually in accounting of finance, CPA or CPA candidate preferred. These employers want their employees to know the finer points of an Income Statement and Balance Sheet, and probably aren't interested in their "general knowledge". A high school diploma, no matter which decade you received it, would even get you an interview much less the job.

I work with people that went to HS in the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's. (I graduated in '90) From what I've personally witnessed from these peoples' writing styles, speaking style, etc, I haven't noticed that the older generations have any superior education compared to me. Personally, I've been out of HS for 12 years and most of the nitty gritty knowledge purged from my brain long ago. I'm sure the same happend most everyone else. I could post more, but I have to get back to work.

[nanny]

I had forgotten about those games. Did you go snipe hunting with your boyfriend?

No, but I knew about snipe hunting. As I said, we had to do our courting while 'walking' around the house - or we did a little 'sparking' riding our horses.

You know I can remember when things changed. In 1956, we were the 2nd folks in our community to get a TV, within a year, most had TV's and overnight no one was satisfied with what they had. It was so sad. Our 'parties' stopped and kids thought they had to go to dances, every woman felt so deprived, compared to Lucy. We came into the 20th century almost overnight. It was a sad thing, really.