busyEducated and Ignorant
Only one in four Oklahoma high school students can correctly name the first president of the United States, according to a survey released Friday.</div>The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs conducted the survey to find the students' basic knowledge of civics, Tulsa World reported. Students were asked 10 questions taken from the U.S. citizenship test.The passing rate for Oklahoma high school students was 2.8 percent. About 92 percent of candidates pass the test for U.S. citizenship. Take a sample citizenship test below the video.
I took the sample test and scored 7 correct out of 10 questions. By my personal standards, that is moderately crummy. On the other hand, I haven't taken a civics class in years and I was answering these off the top of my head without studying. If I needed any of the information, I could easily find it; and if I was going to take a serious test, I darn well would study for it.
I think that a lack of awareness as to America's history and its proper functioning is contributing to problems today. I find it rather alarming that incoming citizens are doing so much better on that test than natural-born citizens. Our schools are not doing a very effective job of educating students, and many of the "reforms" are making things worse instead of better.
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Thoughts
September 22 2009, 23:14:57 UTC 11 years ago
She was very lucky to have you for that.
>>Thing is, I shouldn't have had to shoulder that responsibility myself, and wouldn't have if the schools did their job properly.<<
Too true.
>>I caught (and still occasionally catch) some flak from educational professionals, and certain supporters of educational professionals, for doing what I did, but I stand by my decision. <<
One reason for that is it's hard to teach things you aren't good at yourself. So homeschooled kids are often great at their parents' interests and bad at things their parents are bad at. Of course, the same thing happens if the kid gets a school teacher who is bad at something(s) or just a lousy teacher.
September 22 2009, 22:22:31 UTC 11 years ago
*sigh*
September 22 2009, 23:09:49 UTC 11 years ago
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September 23 2009, 05:23:17 UTC 11 years ago
Hancock, like Randolph, was officially the President of Congress.
The first President of the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation was John Hanson. Some people call him the first president of the US. But that office -- President of the United States of America -- did not exist until the Constitution was adopted in 1788. Hanson was also referred to in official documents as "the President of Congress".
This is more than a semantic difference. The President of Congress had very limited powers, less than those of the Speaker of the House today. The whole concept of President as head of the Executive Branch of Government was newly created by the Constitution.
(Oh, yeah, I got a 10 out of 10 on that citizenship test...)
September 22 2009, 23:04:33 UTC 11 years ago
*sigh*
September 23 2009, 00:32:15 UTC 11 years ago
We need to improve the education system -- and really, the way people think about education. There is far too much information now for students to memorize more than the most basic stuff. It's more important that people understand how to find information when they need it, assess whether what they've found is solid, and apply it to the task at hand.
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Re: *sigh*
September 23 2009, 04:49:31 UTC 11 years ago
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Re: *sigh*
11 years ago
September 22 2009, 23:27:02 UTC 11 years ago
Most of my answers were either school memories or educated guesses (let me not get started on the current state of our schools, though).
September 23 2009, 04:51:45 UTC 11 years ago
Neither is possible, the former because you can't really quantify learning (ask any teacher about this) and the latter because next to politics and religion, God help you if you question the perfect special specialness of someone's kid.
September 23 2009, 08:14:29 UTC 11 years ago
[the principle was an American ex-pat, hence the comparison I guess.]
September 23 2009, 14:30:28 UTC 11 years ago
My score was 8/10, taken without recourse to Google. I buggered the question about the WW1 president. OTOH, I've been out of high school for over 30 years.
September 23 2009, 15:36:31 UTC 11 years ago