Could Isaac Newton answer these questions?......If not, I suppose we must decide he was an uneducated dunce and not as smart as the 10 year old.
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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The achievements of today's college under graduates, in the hard sciences such as math, physics, and chemistry, is not worse or better than it was in 1950....true. We are talking here about the unchangeable basics of science that cannot be "dumbed down".....and the computer studies you infer are all based away from this fundamental and unchangeable scientific foundation.
Nonetheless, such things as English literature and the various social scineces, for example, are mere shadows of what was once required curriculum. Now we have the wonders of such things as Edridge Cleaver displacing Shakespeare and graduates in many fields nearly put out into the world nearly illiterate. As a result, many Universities have found it necessary to teach renmedial high school work to enable young people to "master" the most elemental of these non-science courses.
Sad
I have a friend who graduated from Central High, Little Rock, in 1958 with the National Guard camped on the football field and patrolling the halls.
As a junior he hooked up his mother's stove so that a phone call home turned the oven on.
After college he was a jet pilot in the navy; landed jets on a moving ship.
After Viet Nam and 5 years in the navy his degree (EE)was obsolete (computers had become big) so he went to Georgia Tech for a Master's.
He retired last year (VP) from a major computer corp; has 7 patents used in computers.
His best friend in high school went on to a Ph D in bio-physics and retired from Brown University.
Meaning they know more about gays and Eminem.
Without a doubt, the '50s was the best time to be a kid in the entire history of mankind.
Still talking the talk, eh? Scared to WALK THE WALK? I'll be online here on Christmas Day and will be looking out for you. As I stated before, I will take any quiz questions on American History from other Freepers and the first one to answer each question (to prevent wasting time looking up the answer on the Web) wins. Then all of the winning answers are tallied to determine the final winner.
I'll be here, cynicom. Will you?
The attitude then was "this is what you're expected to learn -- those who cannot keep up can drop out". The attitude now is "no child left behind -- we will dumb down the curriculum until ANYBODY can pass it, no matter how dumb"
Well, I'm not certain that he can describe the mercury light thing, the other two are a shoe in. He was taught by the Franciscan Nuns.
I would call him and ask him, but this is finals week. One more semester and I'm and I'll be disconnected from the tuition leach.
Having a command over a body of knowledge and being able to apply it and being able to add to it is a lot more than memorizing those silly lists of 1,000 facts that educated people should know.
Oh, they think they do, and asking students what an oratorio is could be considered sexual harassment on some campii...
Not according to the Libs. According to them, little kids lived in constant terror of THE BOMB back then. DUCK AND COVER!
Could Isaac Newton answer these questions?......If not, I suppose we must decide he was an uneducated dunce and not as smart as the 10 year old.
I humbly suggest not asking today's kids if one wants a valid answer...
Beatcha.
Being a Class of '56 guy, I suppose I'm representative of the control group.
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