How much do you want to bet that there are 10 million Chinese and 10 million Indians who can actually answer these questions correctly (and tons more difficult questions), and who are going to ensure that a vast portion of America's 20 million students never get a career beyond flipping burgers or doing pedicures?
8 comments:
The reason for the poor test scores was that the test was written in English.
The scores would have been higher if it had been an oral test, sung to rap music.
Uh Huh, Uh Huh, Uh Huh.
Mike Farrell
Cagayan de Oro
Nah.
I'll bet you that these same students could give you detailed information on MLB standings, or a good analysis of NFL defensive patterns, or plot synopses of favorite TV shows, or intimate details of dozens of movie stars' love lives.
The fact is that American students are having their minds wrecked by trivial subjects... the cotton candy of knowledge is the only thing they consume.
I may loves me some Star Trek trivia, or sci-fi-fantasy books, or the best stragegy for playing video games, and those things contribute to my fund of knowledge, but contribute nothing to the real value of my knowledge... but those are only 1% of things I take the time to learn. With American students, that percentage (naturally unmeasurable) of useless knowledge is approaching a critically dangerous level.
Yesterday, I spent my lunch break studying Doolittle's raid on Tokyo, John Birch, and The Flying Tigers. In the evening, I watched a documentary on the Greek-Persian wars and the reign of Ivan The Terrible. Then before bed, I studied the electical systems of motorcycles. Then... for dessert... I took 20 minutes to read a chapter of a wizard-and-dragons book.
If American students don't approach life and learning the same way (because you know damn well, there are students all around the planet who do), they are going to be doomed when it comes time to make something of themselves.
We live in the information age, and American students know more things now than ever before, but if their diet of food even remotely resembled their diet of information, they would have died of malnutrition long ago. Like I said: "The world's dumbest smart people."
Right on, Jil! I could make some more comments...but I won't. Such as...never too late...glad you've seen the light...way to go, son.
So - you won't see such comments here. LOL
This appears as nothing more than a trivia test. I doubt that being able to answer the questions correctly has anything to do with aptitude. Maybe the students should be able to answer those questions, but in all reality, the test does little to measure a person's intelligence.
It is rumored that Einstein did not know his own telephone number. Did that make him stupid?
Maybe the youth and probably many of the adults of America are stupid, but this test does little in the way of proving it.
I can make a test that would "prove" anyone to be stupid. All I have to ask is questions that you should know, but probably don't, as it has little bearing with actual daily life.
Bottom line, this test proves nothing except some students did not pass a trivia test. Big deal.
Um... Anon,
This test shows that 39% of High School students don't know "what ocean is on the east coast of the United States." That's a bit of trivial picayune to you? That's no big deal?
You think "this test does little in the way of proving" adults are stupid when 77% of them couldn't name George Washington as the first president of the United States?
Let's get real here: How easy do the questions have to get before you would officially label somebody stupid?
I hate to say it, but it is your attitude that is partly to blame for test results like this: "Who needs to know about the constitution in order to get a good-paying job programming computers?" I'll bet that is exactly what you think, right? Well, you're completely wrong, and I think that most people would agree with me.
p.s. I don't know my own telephone number either.
Um, Mom...
Since when do you "LOL"?
Have you drank too many Diet Sprite spritzers, or has somebody hijacked your blogger account? What was your mother's maiden name?
We do not know how this test was administered. I know if someone asked me something like this, I would intentionally give the most stupid answer, just to throw the test results off.
Do a survey in High School about sex, I bet a large percentage will lie about that. What makes you think that they are any more truthful with this test?
Now, if there was an incentive, like $20 for each correct answer, maybe we would see a different result.
I know when I was in school, and there was no incentive to giving the right answer, many would put down any answer so they could be done with the test. But if there was an incentive, then they would apply themselves and at least try to give the correct answer.
Anon,
I'll admit that the possibility exists that students gave the wrong answers intentionally. It would explain the "Atlantic question" which of course baffles me.
Since that is a question we can assume any high school student would know, let's assume that 39% of students gave false answers. Yet, only 4.6% gave ALL wrong answers, which is strange. That means that roughly 34% of students got the Atlantic question wrong but answered at least one other question right. This seems to show some fleeting effort on some questions.
My conclusion is that this test definately could have been skewed by deliberately wrong answers, but I do think it also shows that there are high school students in America... and not some miniscule percentage... who cannot remember the name of the ocean on America's East Coast when asked to do so.
What surprises me on a second level (and gives me more pause than your "wrong answer on purpose" or the other Anon's poorly-thought-out "it's just useless trivia" response above) is that only 2.2% of students... 22 out of 1,000... scored 60% on this test, only 6 students scored 70%, and no student scored 80%, 90%, or 100%.
This means that all of the Valedictorians, kids with 4.0 GPAs... kids who take their education seriously... don't know some of this stuff either, which means that it is a 100% certainty that they have not been taught Civics 101. (We all know that smart kids remember everything they're taught. If they studied it, you can bet they'll know it.)
Therefore, I also conclude that Civics 101 must be a 12th grade course, and these are 11th grade or 10th grade students taking the test.
If that is the case, and these are students who have not yet taken Civics 101, then I would call questions 3, 4, 7, 8, and possibly 10 into question... I would call 50% of the questions invalid for the age of the students asked.
But there is very little excuse for missing any of the rest of the questions... and anybody who has taken a Civics 101 course should know the answers to these exceptionally fundamental questions about American Government.
(To be honest, my high school self would have scored either 50% or 60% on this test. Maybe even 40% on a bad day... which would still have put me in roughly the top quartile of test takers.)
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