About every year or so, a group interested in education reform will poll college seniors about ought-to-be-well-known facts concerning American history, politics, and other subjects. These invariably find about the same thing: in those subjects, students know surprisingly little.
Also invariably, those studies direct the blame at the universities. Why don’t college seniors — who are supposed to be some of the most highly educated people in the country — know about the nation’s founding? Why can’t they distinguish between Karl Marx’s writings and Thomas Jefferson’s? Why are they conversant on the subject of “Beavis & Butt-head” but not on James Madison? How come they know more about Snoop Doggy-Dog than how many senators are from their home states, let alone know who they are?
In short, what are colleges teaching these kids? It sure doesn’t seem to be the basics for American citizenship. How can our colleges and universities keep turning out kids woefully unprepared for informed living?
These studies generally receive copious media attention, as they should. It is unquestionably a matter of concern when those who’ve spent the greatest amount of time in education seem to know so little about things that should inform their thoughts and actions as American citizens. This concern has been expressed throughout American history, but perhaps the idea was encapsulated best by famed American orator and Congressman Daniel Webster, speaking upon the completion of the monument to commemorate the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1843.
Quoth he: “Knowledge is the only fountain both of the love and the principles of human liberty.” In other words, students need to know these things because that knowledge itself helps them understand how — and why — to propitiate their legacies.
Nevertheless, rarely in the public discussion of these studies is the question asked: Why is students’ lack of basic knowledge the fault of the colleges? Should we be wanting our institutions of higher learning also charged with imparting elementary facts?
The reason appears to be post-hoc. The students polled are usually college seniors, so obviously they never learned this stuff in college, therefore the reason they haven’t is because the colleges don’t teach it.
It is likely true that colleges by and large don’t teach the basics. At this point public outcry should be suspended in favor of considering whether they should be expected to. After all, only a small percentage of American citizens attend college. All are compelled, however, to receive schooling at the lower levels. It is upon those schools — high school, junior high, elementary and even primary schools — that the outrage over kids being ignorant of American essentials should be directed.
Polls of college seniors detect only what the presumably smartest young adults in America don’t know — what about those who leave high school and enter either the workforce or some less rarified provider of job training? What do they know — or, perhaps more to the point, what don’t they know of American essentials?
The Heartland Institute recently published a progress report on the “National Education Goals” set in 1990 by the National Education Goals Panel in The National Education Goals Report: Building a Nation of Learners. Heartland found very little progress — the only progress being slight increases in percentages of students demonstrating grade-level “competency” in reading and mathematics (in reading, only one-third to two-fifths of students, depending upon grade level; and in math, only one-sixth to one-fourth of students, depending upon grade level) and in percentages of students starting school “ready to learn” (fat lot of good that might do them, given the schools’ lack of progress in academic measures).
Heartland found no achievement of these laudable goals:
• students leaving grades 4, 8, and 12 competent in the subjects of English, mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, arts, history, and geography
• adults will be literate and in possession of the knowledge and skills needed to compete in a global economy
• U.S. students will be first in the world in mathematics and science achievement
Too often colleges are used in the public forum as the Band-Aid to cover up problems that exist in the lower levels of education. Kids don’t know how to read? No problem; colleges will just offer more “remedial” education (first-year English often being the sole remaining required classes on campus). Minorities not learning enough? Fear not, O ye public-school system; our institutions of higher education will just employ racial preferences and call that action “affirmative.” Applicants don’t know the Gettysburg Address, couldn’t find Gettysburg on a map, and think Lincoln might have said “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”? Oh, colleges ought to fix that; why, for shame!
(What about the kids who won’t go to college?) Quiet, you.