Graduates Know Even Less About History (Take The Quiz!)

Madison.com ^ | September 19, 2007 | Anita Weier

[B-Chan]

Now you know why I dropped out...

[Peter W. Kessler]

Got 85% correct. The economics questions messed me up. I’m a history major.

That’s no excuse, however.

[zeugma]

Nothing of importance. A combination of laziness and not liking the appearance of buttons in 2.0. I do have 2.0 on one of my other machines, just not the one I usually use. I just mentioned the version in case anyone else having trouble with the site was ill on 1.5.

 

 Cool.  Browsers are a lot about personal preferences. I use the Noia Extreme skin, so I don't really worry much aboout the default appearance of FF or Thunderbird. Once they stop releasing patches for the 1.5 line, I'd recommend  upgrading though.
 

[Greg F]

You answered 57 out of 60 correctly — 95.00 %

[Greg F]

I got 59 out of 60. Should’ve been 60 — fought with myself and lost on the one I missed.
__________________

That’s impressive. I got 57 out of the 60. I missed the final battle of the Revolutionary War (Yorktown), when Jamestown was founded, and that the Monroe Doctrine discouraged the formation of more western colonies in the Americas (I should have got the Monroe Doctrine one since I knew the correct answer was correct . . . but thought that it might have included the term Manifest Destiny). The other two I was just flat wrong about.

Anyway congrats on 59 out of 60. Which one did you miss?

[OldCorps]

i got 91.67; back to school i guess

[Enchante]

You weren’t asking me but I have a funny story about the only question I missed. I also got 59/60 and the only one I missed I actually knew the answer to but thought it was a trick question and tried to think as I thought the test-maker was thinking rather than just answering the question..... it was the one about highest govt. spending in the past 20 years, and I knew it was Social Security, but I answered military because I figured the correct answer was so obvious that the test-makers were trying to trick people with some provision about Social Security coming from a different type of budget, etc. I wasn’t sure of any details about how Social Security is actually listed in the federal budgets so I figured we were being set up for a trick answer. Ah, well, next time just answer the question as it appears!

[Greg F]

It’s hard to get 100% when you haven’t been in class with the writer of the test to know their biases and pet factoids . . .

[mimaw]

Does anyone believe these consequences aren’t the result of a vast left wing conspiracy? Keep them dumb and they’ll vote dem.

[Enchante]

"I'd really like to see this administered fairly to all regular FRreepers and all regular DU'ers or Kosacs"

DUers and KOSfreaks would average maybe 20% but they'd manage to turn it into a series of rants against "cultural bias" of the test and "Bush's fault" diatribes about the educational system and "neocon conspiracies" to elevate teaching of boring facts over useful leftist propaganda.

There has been quite an onslaught against teaching key FACTS of history, geography, politics, and economics..... this soft-headed "progressive" attitude of making it all up as you go has been growing in power over the past 40+ years (actually it goes back to Dewey and his fellow self-styled "progressive" educators). I took one intro ed course as an undergrad, when I still thought it conceivable that I might want to teach history in a secondary school, and I'll never forget the prof's comment when she returned my "model lesson plan" for a final project in the course. Basically, we'd had to write up weekly lesson plans for a semester course in any subject. She liked my plan and gave it an 'A' but basically said (not quite so bluntly) that it would have to be "dumbed down" a lot before it could actually be used. That helped me decide not to pursue a h.s. teaching career!

[Enchante]

"Dautrich said freshmen there scored so high that they “had less room to move up.”"

I don't think he should be too proud of graduating students who average 67.26% on such a test. It's great that Grove City College requires more study of the "history of civilization" than other colleges, but it looks like they don't require too much study of AMERICAN civilization.

[litehaus]

88.33..........What’s that these days-—a B?

[SirLinksalot]

That's what I've been saying all along. If Harvard and Grove City College, with their less than satisfactory scores, are considered the best of the lot, this country is graduating a lot of students with poor knowledge of civics.

This isn't news to be happy about. But they're SPINNING it that way. Sort of saying, hey -- we failed the test, but look we did much better than the others who failed.

[ScubieNuc]

Just took the quiz and got a 52.

I was stoked, cause I haven’t looked at most of that stuff in many years! The sad thing is that these college students are right in the thick of all this learning and they are doing worse.

Of course I’m going to break my arm patting myself on the back. I only took two college courses in my life (econ. and pre-calc.) and that was over 10 years ago. 8^)

I’m sending the quiz to my wife and brother.

[Centurion2000]

Not too bad ....

You answered 53 out of 60 correctly — 88.33 %

[Burma Jones]

GregF: I missed the one about Plato’s Republic, which I should have gotten, but I shouldn’t complain because there were a couple I had to guess on.

[MEG33]

I surprised myself and got 80 percent right. It’s been a LONG time since I was in school. It would seem they aren’t teaching this nowadays anyway.

[EmilyGeiger]

I only scored 74%. :(

[DouglasKC]

I only scored 74%. :(

Me too, but I felt like I did much better. And we DID beat Harvard seniors.