Colleges get failing grade teaching civics.

http://americancivicliteracy.org/report/major_findings.html


Major Findings - Finding 1

America's colleges and universities fail to increase knowledge about America's history and institutions. There is a trivial difference between college seniors and their freshmen counterparts regarding knowledge of America's heritage. Seniors scored just 1.5 percent higher on average than freshmen, and at many schools, seniors know less than freshmen about America's history, government, foreign affairs, and economy. Overall, college seniors failed the civic literacy exam, with an average score of 53.2 percent, or F, on a traditional grading scale.

Student Knowledge

Undergraduates know little about America's history, government, foreign affairs, and economy. Table 1 illustrates college seniors' low level of knowledge after three years of undergraduate education. They scored on average a disappointing 53.2 percent overall.

The average senior at every college scored below 70 percent correct. This would be a D or F on a basic test using a conventional grading scale. Even at colleges with the highest scoring seniors, no class of seniors scored higher than 69 percent, or D+. Seniors at 22 of the 50 schools scored on average below 50 percent, and seniors at four of the colleges had an average score below 40 percent.

Responses from college seniors to a selection of individual questions display how little they actually know about basic historical facts, ideas, and concepts germane to meaningful participation in American civic life.

* Seniors lack basic knowledge of America's history. More than half, 53.4 percent, could not identify the correct century when the first American colony was established at Jamestown. And 55.4 percent could not recognize Yorktown as the battle that brought the American Revolution to an end (28 percent even thought the Civil War battle at Gettysburg the correct answer).

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When I see some of the so-called adults around I can't be surprised we're raising a nation of dummies.

I did, in 1966.

College these days seems to be nothing more than a glorified Vo-tech school.

I remember actually discussing current events in the news.Last I heard a lot of schools don't even have Civics courses anymore.Look how good that's working out for us.

I cannot tell you how many times I signed up for a lit class only to get 10 dozen lectures on "Homosexuality in Shakespeare" or "was Milton Transgendered" (or some nonsense like that).

My poly-sci teachers ignore the text and spent their time going off about global warming or the vagina monologues, or the "contract ON america" to date myself.

The only classes that I remember that didn't have some sort of wierd subject not related to the title of the class were sciences, mathematics, physical education, human sexuality, and my comp sci classes.

I appreciated the hard work my professors were putting into their research, but it most definately was bleeding into their lectures and harming my education. I took two poly sci classes, and by the end I guarantee you that half the class still didn't know who the president, VP, Speaker of the House, President Pro-temp of the senate, etc. etc. were. But hey we got "Murican Idal" right?

because I remember being bored shitless in those classes even as I was fascinated by politics in the real world. I doubt the teaching has changed, and I imagine students are just as thoroughly bored as I was.

This stuff is participatory. Trying to sit up in the front of a room and come off as an expert doesn't work even if you are an expert. Unless the kids actively participate in discussions, even if those discussions get out of hand once in a while, those kids will be bored and resentful.

Participation in my memory consisted of bringing in newspaper clippings which a teacher would then talk about.

Yawn.

Which is something I can't say about any other classes.It was one of the only classes that I paid attention in.I spent every other class drawing Spider-Man or Conan pictures...except for Art class,where drawing was expected of me,so I didn't do it.

Getting an idea of the kind of student I was? :D

I was a secondary education major, and government and American History were not required for me but simply on a list of classes I could take (with only one needed for graduation). I ended up taking some American history, world history (pathetically far too Western), and a 400-level seminar in American foreign policy after I got back from a semester of study in Russia. I had far more than the average secondary ed major, though.

How their government is supposed to work is one of the more important things our educational system should be doing.

But what do I know?

I often griped about the odd requirements--like education classes were far more important than actually learning anything. I had several elementary ed. majors (most of whom flunked out later) maintain that they didn't need to know anything other than how to teach effectively out of a textbook. Made me furious every time.

This is a slanted piece of tripe if I ever saw one. Go check out the board for this paritcular group<http://americancivicliteracy.org/resources/staff.html#nclb> President of the Guggenheim Foundation, George "Macaca" Allen, these are folks who have little love for higher learning, and are in fact working hard to either destroy it, discredit it, or take it over, simply because higher education dares to have liberal views, and pursues the truth.

Another shocker about this report is its methodology. Naw, no bias here.

Take this with a huge grain of salt. Then go down and talk to some of your local college students and find out what they really know. I'm willing to bet a hell of a lot more than this "study" claims they do.

Have dismantled much of the Constitution?

Habeas Corpus is gone, and a lot of Democrats voted to see it go.

That's been around since the Magna Carta in 1215 CE.

Eight hundred years of legal precedent gone because of nineteen guys with box cutters.

And Americans were practically begging to have it happen.

Where do you get that from?

same results. Universities have become a place to get a 'degree' to become employed by those who 'support' the university and serve no educational purpose.

Or was it ever in style?