Another High School Survey

by Cliopatria

Slate brings news of another survey of high school students, with depressingly predictable results. In a multiple choice test,"only half knew why the Federalist papers were written . . . Fewer than half knew when the Civil War was fought." The questions that attracted the best results were civil-rights related ones: who said"I Have a Dream" in the history section, the plotline of To Kill A Mockingbird in the literature section.

The--ideologically diverse--group that conducted the survey, Common Core, blamed curricular changes associated with No Child Left Behind for the result. Perhaps. But based on what I've seen of the Education bureaucracy in New York, I doubt that even a repeal of NCLB would lead to an increased curricular emphasis on the purpose of the Federalist Papers.

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R.R. Hamilton - 3/2/2008

I think it is Question 32 that talks about "the novel" To Kill A Mockingbird. I think this would confuse most youngsters today as my 5th grader and 9th grader assure me that it is being taught as NON-FICTION in schools today. (Yes, apparently my 5th grader will be taught the same, um, text in 9th grade to ensure that she doesn't mistake it for a work of fiction.)

Fats Durston - 3/2/2008

I had quite similar thoughts to Alan, and was surprised that the study used memorization questions to complain about a system that's based on memorization (not that I'm defending the NCLB).

It's a little like that survey that "proved" Americans got stupider by going to college (Ivy Leagues, even), because they no longer remembered details from American high school history classes.

Alan Allport - 3/2/2008

The fact that 87% of teens know who wrote the Declaration of Independence, or that 88% knew what the attack on Pearl Harbor was?

(By the way, some of those questions are depressing. #19 is simply wrong, for instance, while #18 is at least debatable.)