Teens losing touch with common cultural and historical references

[Snowden]

Teens losing touch with common cultural and historical references


By Greg Toppo
USA TODAY

Big Brother. McCarthyism. The patience of Job.

Don't count on your typical teenager to nod knowingly the next time you drop a reference to any of these. A study out today finds that about half of 17-year-olds can't identify the books or historical events associated with them.

Twenty-five years after the federal report A Nation at Risk challenged U.S. public schools to raise the quality of education, the study finds high schoolers still lack important historical and cultural underpinnings of "a complete education." And, its authors fear, the nation's current focus on improving basic reading and math skills in elementary school might only make matters worse, giving short shrift to the humanities � even if children can read and do math.

"If you think it matters whether or not kids have common historical touchstones and whether, at some level, we feel like members of a common culture, then familiarity with this knowledge matters a lot," says American Enterprise Institute researcher Rick Hess, who wrote the study.

Among 1,200 students surveyed:

•43% knew the Civil War was fought between 1850 and 1900.

•52% could identify the theme of 1984.

•51% knew that the controversy surrounding Sen. Joseph McCarthy focused on communism.

In all, students earned a C in history and an F in literature, though the survey suggests students do well on topics schools cover. For instance, 88% knew the bombing of Pearl Harbor led the USA into World War II, and 97% could identify Martin Luther King Jr. as author of the "I Have a Dream" speech.

Fewer (77%) knew Uncle Tom's Cabin helped end slavery a century earlier.

"School has emphasized Martin Luther King, and everybody teaches it, and people are learning it," says Chester Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank. "What a better thing it would be if people also had the Civil War part and the civil rights part, and the Harriet Tubman part and the Uncle Tom's Cabin part."

The findings probably won't sit well with educators, who say record numbers of students are taking college-level Advanced Placement history, literature and other courses in high school.

"Not all is woe in American education," says Trevor Packer of The College Board, which oversees Advanced Placement.

The study's release today in Washington also serves as a sort of coming out for its sponsor, Common Core, a new non-partisan group pushing for the liberal arts in public school curricula. Its leadership includes a North Carolina fifth-grade teacher, an author of history and science textbooks, a teachers union leader and a former top official in the George H.W. Bush administration.

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20080226/1a_bottomstrip26.art.htm

[leobold1]

This is one of the major problems I have with the "No Child Left Behind". For a school to do well, the teachers have to teach the test, to the point that the month leading up to the test is a review in almost all classes (to include History and Liberal Arts (Home Ec and some electives)).

My dad's a teacher in the Dallas school system (history department) and complains about this every February and March. 3 days a week are taken up by the reviews and 2 for the "normal" sylabus. All for a test that is showing that it teaches the basics, but not how to operate in the real world.

There are more service jobs by far than most any other type of job, and I think this is shown by the fact that what the students are taught doesn't prepare them for the job coming out of High School.

I didn't go to college. When I got out of the military, I had the skills to do my job, mastery of some metal working skills, but because I didn't have college, I lost out on many jobs. I was either too experienced for the lower paying jobs, or lack of college for the higher paying jobs.

We need to teach students how to live in the world. This does include math and science and literature, but it also includes Home Ec (I've never had a worse meal than when I had dinner at one of my friend's house who was just out of high school) and other liberal arts. Most people lack money because its easier to go out to eat than it is to cook, and because they probably suck at cooking.

There are some who have the special touch with a skill that isn't in the service industry. Cooking shows are dumbed down so "anyone can cook", just not well. We love to listen to musicians, but won't be caught dead at a concert unless its the latest rock star. If we tie our shoes properly, we're having a good day, then we put on the uniform and ask if you want a mint on your pillow or give you your change.

[Snowden]

It's almost mandatory to have a Bachelor's Degree for most jobs, isn't it. Really, to too great an extent for some jobs. But, as you say, the jobs that are available for those with only a high school diploma are not high paying jobs. This is only since WWII; college was always desirable for those who could afford it, but not mandatory. High school teaching was far more into the classics, literature, and such than now. Reading books for the sake of learning things outside our lives was part of it all.

Now true education; how to live in the world, seems to be taught only in colleges, and that's not a good thing. We see too many of our jobs leave the nation, and we are not preparing our young people to cope with the world and employment now available here. I talked to a computer expert who was American, much to my delight; until he told me he lives in India now because that's where the jobs are. He said he has a good many friends there, Americans who could not find employment in the US. This is abominable. Not that there's anything wrong with living in India, if that's what they want to do. But to have to go outside the US to hold jobs for US companies? That is inexcusable.

The findings probably won't sit well with educators, who say record numbers of students are taking college-level Advanced Placement history, literature and other courses in high school.

This is true; those students who are exceptionally intelligent take college courses in high school. But they should be taught as high school subjects. Our youngest son was sent to college by his high school because he had taken all the college courses they could teach, so his senior year of high school was his freshman year at college. They are forcing the colleges to teach things that should be mandatory before graduating from high school. That's what it amounts to, and having to teach for some convoluted test as is done now is so much worse! Jeff, no wonder your father is frustrated; no wonder the No Child Left Behind is one of the worst educational farces ever dreamed up. And it is just that. I've heard other teachers complain about it. Instead of teaching what is needed, our youngsters today are being fed garbage and told it's just the best thing to eat.

We really need to do something about education in this country; and I believe the first step is to get the Federal Government out of it. Get rid of the Department of Education being in the hands of the Feds. It's become a political plum, and thus it is practically worthless.