December 20, 2002
AGAINST WHIGGERY:
College Seniors No More Knowledgeable Than 1950s High School Grads (Scott Hogenson, December 18, 2002, CNSNews.com)The college seniors of today have no better grasp of general knowledge than the high school graduates of almost half a century ago, according to the results of a new study.The average of correct responses for modern college seniors on a series of questions assessing "general cultural knowledge" was 53.5 percent compared with 54.5 percent of high school graduates in 1955, according to a survey by Zogby International.
The Zogby poll of 401 randomly selected college seniors was conducted in April for the Princeton, N.J.-based National Association of Scholars and released Wednesday.
"The average amount of knowledge that college seniors had was just about the same as the average amount of knowledge that high school graduates had back in the 1950s," said NAS President Stephen H. Balch.
Stories like this are particularly satisfying because they deny progress. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 20, 2002 8:14 AM
I'd be more interested in this if I knew what the heck "general cultural knowledge" is (it doesn't sound like much of anything to me).
Posted by: mike earl at December 20, 2002 7:54 AMMike's right and, of course, college today is high school.
Posted by: David Cohen at December 20, 2002 8:15 AMand tomorrow it will be junior high, and so on...
Posted by: oj at December 20, 2002 8:51 AMAnd what percentage of the population were high school grads in 1950? Compared to percentage of college grads today?
Posted by: Harry at December 20, 2002 1:30 PMDoes it matter if people know which lake is the largest? (I'm guessing it's Lake Superior, and I'm sure it's one of the great lakes, but is it a Crime Against Knowledge to think it's Lake Michigan?)
Indeed, Mike, indeed. What is
it they're talking about?
You start by not knowing HOMES and soon we've nothing but broken homes. (How's that for a cheap slogan?)
Posted by: oj at December 20, 2002 4:40 PMLike Harry said, this reasoning is flawed.
Going to college now (what with the expansion of education) is probably about as popular as finishing high school was back in the 50's.
Yes, well, the cheapening of the college degree hardly seems like cause for satisfaction.
Posted by: oj at December 20, 2002 7:30 PMGo ahead, children, disdain learning. We can always find people from, and even still in, other parts of the world who are ready and willing to do the tasks you are too scatterbrained to accomplish. What are the principal cultural differences between the 50's and our time? They are the secularization of education, and the degredation of popular music, both of which have profound effects on the ability of the young to learn.
Posted by: Lou Gots at December 20, 2002 7:48 PMDepends what your goal is, Orrin.
If all you want to do is exalt the value of a
diploma, that's fine. But if your goal is to increase
the overall educational level of a society,
it doesn't much matter whether they get
their larnin' in grade school, graduate school
or church.
I have a bar bet question nobody has ever
answered correctly. What was the poorest
country in Europe in 1840?
The answer is not Greece or Portugal or even
Ireland but Sweden.
Yet Sweden required each village to have a
school so the children could read their bibles.
In 1840, there wasn't much economic
advantage to be gotten from reading in
Sweden, but when the modern age arrived,
a society where practically everybody was
literate turned out to be highly competitive, and
within a couple generations, the Swedes
were generating about the highest per capita
output in the world.
No question, more people have more education
now than at any previous time in our history,
or any history, for that matter.
Sweden? You're kidding right? The king of Sweden lives like an American waiter.
The point is you've not increased the educational level here--you achieve the same level later in life. God knows how much less they know than the college grads of that era.
Sweden's economic policies are why they're relatively poor.
Up until the 1960's, their economy was growing faster than America's.
And reversed course once they were all educated.
Posted by: oj at December 22, 2002 2:07 PMYou may not approve of what the Swedes do
with their wealth after they've created it,
but you cannot deny they've created it.
Knowledge has been commoditized. My new
son-in-law, who went into the Navy after
high school, is a cryptographer. Doing what
the dons in Room 40 did 85 years ago.
Education for its own sake is an expensive
hobby. Public education is, or ought to be,
instrumental. And it is.
Sweden: per capita GDP: $24,700
US: $36,300
They're about 2/3rds of a real nation.
Up until 1960 or so, Sweden had one of the freest economies and lowest tax burdens in the world. They've turned to living off their past and there soon may not be much more to live off, as Swedish businesses are steadily declining.
Most economists would blame the welfare state, not education, for the shift.
At one point, they were ahead of the U.S. in per capita output.
I'll be happy to attribute their relative decline (they are still way ahead of most places) to welfare statism, although I happen to have inside information about a disastrous management strategy taken by Swedish industrialists in the '80s that dragged them down.
In any case, education is only education. It isn't the same as wisdom.
I think you'd have to add, as well, that Sweden made itself uncompetitive in Europe by funneling more money into militarism than its economic competitors.