Apr
A Bunch of Dummies
In the USA Weekend Magazine that comes with the Sunday newspaper, there was an opportunity top take a history test. Audrey and I followed the link to the test. The quiz had 60 questions on American History. Keep in mind that Audrey has not had a history class since 1969, and I believe my last class in U.S. history was early 1972. Audrey scored 70 and I scored 83.33.
Next there was a file that showed how modern college students did. The best were Harvard students, who averaged less than 70. From there it went downhill, with some colleges as low as the 40s.
College? I remembered those questions from high school! Those were not college-level questions 30+ years ago!
What I have to wonder what kind of dummies we have out there. These are college kids from Ivy League schools ranking below 70 on a test that most of us would have passed in high school! Where else are these junior wing-nuts deficient?
Yes, I am angry. I am angry that our standards have slipped so low that our “best and brightest” are at the same point where the class duds were thirty years ago. This is appalling! Equally vexing is that they have ‘gut courses’ in college that teach things like computer games. Our “educated” folks know more about the Mario Brothers than they do about Marconi.
One good thing: no study time, with thirty plus years out of school ,and I still racked up an 83.33. But that being the case, should not a student with fresh knowledge have scored at least a 95?
Here is the link to the quiz
And so….the years of continuous substance abuse by our generation and the later pushing of political correctness had nothing to do with these kids being functionally retarded?
April 15th, 2008 at 12:33 amI wouldn’t say it is so much substance abuse as something else. Political correctness? If your definition includes “social promotion” and relaxing standards of education as PC, then so it is. Just prior to our generation taking the reins, social promotion and similar policies took hold. (That is where students are promoted, even if they did not pass the grade.) One result of those policies incidents of adults who were virtually illiterate.
It boils down to a matter of holding people to a set of standards. Without expecting people to meet a high standard, it is less likely that they will produce a high performance.
Still and all, this is appalling. Blame parents, students or society, but the end result is still the same.
April 15th, 2008 at 11:25 pm