Survey Finds College Students Lack ‘Rudimentary’ Knowledge of History and Civics
“It seems that many students are completely tuned out to politics, lacking the knowledge to participate effectively”
This is because American schools are choosing to emphasize social justice and progressive talking points instead.
The College Fix reports:
College students lack ‘rudimentary’ knowledge of history, civics: survey
College students lack a “rudimentary grasp” of American history and government, as displayed in a civic literacy assessment recently conducted by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.
The 35-question survey, “Losing America’s Memory 2.0,” asked more than 3,000 students from all 50 states questions about history and government, including Senate term lengths and a quote from the Gettysburg Address, according to ACTA. The survey was conducted in June by College Pulse.
“It seems that many students are completely tuned out to politics, lacking the knowledge to participate effectively,” ACTA’s Vice President for Policy Bradley Jackson told The College Fix in a recent email. “In a democracy, that is a recipe for disaster.”
When asked who is the current president of the U.S. Senate, only 27 percent of students were able to correctly identify Kamala Harris, and over a quarter thought it was President Joe Biden.
Many students were unaware of the six-year length of a U.S. Senate term. Almost a third (31 percent) thought it was a four-year term. Likewise, nearly a fifth (19 percent) incorrectly said representatives to the U.S. House serve a four-year term; they serve two years.
Jackson said he was particularly concerned by another finding: that only 23 percent of students could identify the Gettysburg Address as the source of the quote, “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
“If the people no longer care to understand their government, if they are ignorant of its history and its institutions, a government like ours cannot long stand, according to America’s Founders and later heroes like Lincoln,” Jackson told The Fix.
Additionally, 37 percent of the students correctly identified the current chief justice of the Supreme Court, but 32 percent responded they were “not sure.” Less than one-third (31 percent) were able to identify James Madison as the Father of the Constitution, with almost half (44 percent) incorrectly responding with Thomas Jefferson.
Historian and Hillsdale College Professor Wilfred McClay told The Fix in a recent email he was both “appalled and saddened” by another finding from the survey that found 57 percent of students would flee the country rather than stay and fight in the case of an invasion.
“This reflects a social malady, a sickness of the soul, that runs deeper than just a lack of knowledge,” McClay said. “But one of the best ways to begin combatting that malady is by rededicating ourselves to a proper civic and historical education.”
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Survey Finds College Students Lack ‘Rudimentary’ Knowledge.
FULL STOP.
or, conversely, you could add:
of History and Civics
of arithmetic
of reading comprehension
of biology
of ecology
of language skills
of geography
of writing proficiency
of reasoning
of thinking
…. the list goes on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu7RXlIEbog
The entire education system, from pre-K through post-doc, has been taken over by the Left. It must be completely dismantled. Get government out of education and go with homeschool, neighborhood schools and free-market higher education.
Teachers don’t teach what they don’t care about. Students don’t learn what seems pointless to them. Think about it.
” by another finding from the survey that found 57 percent of students would flee the country rather than stay and fight in the case of an invasion.”
What are they waiting for?
Waiting for Daddy to buy the ticket. Barristas and grocery baggers can’t afford international air travel.
They could just walk across the border. It’s wide open.
But their iPhones won’t work in Mexico!
Haven’t we been seeing this for something like 30 years? While it is really important, it’s kind of a “Duh!” moment nowadays.
For years, Victor Davis Hanson has argued for some kind of SAT-like exam as a requirement for graduation.
Such exams could include topics like Civics, or anything else . They would presumably be useful for prospective employers looking to compare job applicants from different colleges and universities.
Much like the SAT and ACT have traditionally been used to compare students from different high schools
Wouldn’t it be nice if Hillsdale came up with an Exit Exam (that includes civics) — and that exam might become a gold standard that gets adopted by other colleges. Maybe in a few years it’ll become commonplace for job applicant out of college to be asked, “Did you take the Hillsdale Exit Exam? How’d you do?”
Most of them would have a hard time with the Wonderlic,
Good thing it’s been Generally Recognized as Racist, so they’ll never have to.
After all, who cares how smart gladiators and other cannon fodder are? When the thumb goes down, it stops mattering.
Wasn’t aware of that newspaper article from SF. Thank you for posting. Sometimes these days I find myself having to double-check to make sure that my browser hasn’t somehow switched over to Babylon Bee.
How about the Citizenship Exam?
Look at any of the large national teacher’s unions and their platforms all emphasize “social justice” and barely a single word about educational outcomes and achievement. Enough to make you wonder if they should even be called teachers anymore, or just relabeled “propagandists” or “polemicists” and be done with it.
Imho most teachers beyond ~2nd grade
are aware that they do not know topics well enough to be teaching them.
I think teachers in the U.S. today realize that American children as a rule are better off in one of the many variations of “homeschooling.”
But they can’t say it out loud.
“Gentlemen!! We have to save our phony baloney jobs here!”
So ………. they just focus on what amounts to mostly useless nonsense. And so here we are.
Why is identifying Jay-Z’s wife on that survey? Not only did I have no idea of the answer, now that I know it I hope soon to forget it. I’m not sure of the value of a survey that includes that question.
Also, some of the answers provided are technically wrong.
What’s a “Jay-Z”?
[websearch…] Oh.
Big deal. Should I care?
Some kind of singer, is all I know. And now I know he’s married to some other singer about whom I know as little.
So, I have a theory as to why that question is on the survey: to see if College students are capable of identifying “modern” trivia. Being able to compare the students’ knowledge of history from before anyone currently alive was born to modern (popular) history/culture has some use.
I’ll agree that even that question is not the best. And if you were trying to measure that, having more then just that question would be more useful.
whats to know?
whites are racists and poc built the world