- A new poll finds that American college seniors today
are just slightly more knowledgeable than high-school graduates of half
a century ago.
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- The Zogby study was commissioned by the National Association
of Scholars (NAS), one of the nation's foremost advocates of reform in
higher education.
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- The study reveals that current college seniors did better
than 1950 high-school grads on questions relating to literature, music
and, to some extent, science. On questions relating to geography, both
averaged about the same. But today's college seniors did significantly
worse on history questions.
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- Read Zogby Report: Today's College Students and Yesteryear's
High School Grads[PDF]
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- NAS president Stephen Balch says overall, the general
knowledge of 1950 high-school graduates is nearly identical to that of
2002 college seniors.
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- "We are seeing here the result of about 50 years
of 'dumbing down,' in which students are less and less asked to acquire
a broad-based factual knowledge and instead are told that the important
thing is not their specific understandings about the world, but rather
they can think," he explains.
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- Balch says it is apparent that many educators today are
not teaching the basics, but instead are involved in all sorts of esoteric
specializations.
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- "One of the phenomena we've seen, and in part it's
been due to 'progressive' education -- what John Dewey and his colleagues
launched back at the beginning of the twentieth century -- is a retreat
from the idea that people should learn specific facts," Balch says.
"And as far as it's been taken, [it has been] quite damaging. There's
also ... been a deterioration in the quality of the people who teach [in]
our schools."
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- Balch says when education is extended over a longer period,
there is the risk of diluting its content and quality. And according to
Balch, to some significant extent, that has happened.
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- In summarizing its findings, the Zogby study states:
"By almost every measure of cultural knowledge in our survey, today's
college seniors appear to rank far below the college graduates of mid-century."
The survey included questions such as: "What composer wrote the Messiah?"
and "In what country was the Battle of Waterloo fought?"
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- Note: Read the book that
foretold it all:
- The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America: A Chronological
Paper Trail
- Author : Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt
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- © 2003 by Spadata
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- http://www.gohotsprings.com
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