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but I don't think it's fair to ask researchers to take on a project that would require six years to complete, so I thought testing different seniors and freshmen would be acceptable.
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<p>I totally disagree. </p>
<p>Who asked them to undertake this project? Not I, not you., not anybody on this thread. I disagree that it is not fair to expect them to undertake a 6-year project. They designed the project, they ought to set the proper parameters. And yes, that means, in my (never humble) opinion, that they ought to test freshmen then to re-test them as seniors.</p>
<p>But one would have to agree with the premise of the project which is that colleges should teach American history and civics. A premise that is certainly up for debate.</p>
<p>I'm wondering why, if one of their goals is core curriculums, they don't include some of the most famously core schools, like Columbia or St. Johns.</p>
<p>Maybe because there's nothing in their curriculums which would ensure tht they scored any better than anyone else? Which would undermine one of their two theses--Core curriculums are better, and schools aren't teaching enough civics.</p>
<p>For the record, everyone at Columbia takes a two semester course called "Contemporary Civilization" which is basically great books of Philosophy and Political Science (I don't get why it's called "contemporary.") So they do read a lot of Founding Father stuff, but not much recent American History.</p>
<p>I think there's a ton of value added in this education, but I have a feeling it might not show up in a trivia quiz.</p>
<p>The typical Western Civ core curriculum ("Plato to NATO") would not devote 60% of its materials to US history. It takes an awfully long time to get from Plato to the Founding Fathers, let alone Saddam Hussein.</p>
<p>A much bigger concern than sample size is whether the samples were representative.</p>
<p>As the infamous Literary Digest poll proved during the 1936 presidential election, even a sample size of 10,000,000 will be statistically unreliable if it is not a representative sample.</p>
<p>"But one would have to agree with the premise of the project which is that colleges should teach American history and civics. A premise that is certainly up for debate."</p>
<p>I thought that's what high school was for. I could see some colleges deciding that testing freshman might be a good idea and requiring a course for those who didn't know enough. But I sure don't want the government to decide for me. Despite loving history in high school I ended up only taking two semesters of "social science" in college. One was a semester long history of China - well worth it, and one was a David Riesman course in sociology which was a total waste of time. I would have hated being forced to take US History and I didn't take APUSH in high school either.</p>
<p>Oops, I should have checked again on that sample size. It can't be that hard to get a representative sample of students in a college class, however.</p>
<p>I wholeheartedly agree with you (wisteria) and marite that the study would have been a lot better -- although still fundamentally goofy at its core -- if it had surveyed the same kids 3-1/2 years apart. But in the real world that's not a time frame for which a lot of research gets funded. I think if you were testing something a college actually tries to teach, you would get meaningful results by testing freshmen and seniors simultaneously. (And, since this study was testing something most colleges DON'T try to teach, the results that essentially showed little or no change at most schools probably measure something accurately).</p>
<p>I don't think the subjects tested have much to do with Columbia's core curriculum, and I know they have little to do with Chicago's -- maybe four or five questions, the ones about Plato, Locke, and basic free-market economic theory. If you were testing familiarity with the ideas of Thorstein Veblen, Teodor Adorno, Karl Marx, and Adam Smith, and calculus, you would see some significant gains at Chicago.</p>
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But in the real world that's not a time frame for which a lot of research gets funded.
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<p>Yup. And it's why so much education research is flawed, especially the research that goes into NCLB. Three years running and the data shows mediocre performance? On the watch list. Except that the student cohorts are totally different, meaning that they came in with different sets of skills, levels of preparation and problems to be remedied. But the school is blamed for lack of "progress." Who cares that in year 1 Juan from Mexico came in speaking little English but three years later he is competent? He is not in the cohort being analyzed anymore. There now is Li from China who does not speak English. And last year, there was Jean-Baptiste from Haiti. Three years. Ergo, the high school is failing.</p>
<p>^This is exactly the story at our high school. Every year, we get tons of ESL students, and students (who may or may not be ESL) fleeing the dysfunctional districts around us, so every year, we're starting from scratch. So, we "fail."</p>
<p>Never mind the strides each individual student makes.</p>
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It can't be that hard to get a representative sample of students in a college class, however.
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<p>Whether it's hard or not, this study doesn't give any evidence that they actually checked as to whether the sample was representative or not. E.g., was the proportion of science/social science/humanities majors in each college class sample representative of those proportions in that college as a whole? Was the proportion of men and women in each sample representative? Was the SAT distribution of the sample representative of the SAT distribution of the class? </p>
<p>These kinds of checks for representativeness are standard in a well-run statistical study. I see no evidence they were done here.</p>
<p>Another huge issue neglected by the study--what about the proportion of international students at each school? </p>
<p>And were the samples of students from each class at each school representative of the proportion of international students at that school? That would be a very big factor in a study like this.</p>
<p>Reading further between the lines of their sketchy description of their methodology, it appears that what they did to collect the surveys was</p>
<p>a) Buttonhole passing students near busy points on campus
b) Offer them an opportunity to win a sweepstake prize for taking a survey
c) Give them the test</p>
<p>It is not clear what incentives the students had to be careful in their answers to the survey questions, since it is not clear that the correctness of answers influenced their probability of winning the sweepstakes prize incentive for taking the test.</p>
<p>One can imagine some students starting to take the "survey" and deciding just to dash through it circling random answers to enter the sweepstakes.</p>
<p>EDIT: Furthermore, the nature of the incentive to take the test might well have distorted the representativeness of the sample. The most serious students might have been least inclined to waste their time on a survey for some proferred sweepstakes prize.</p>
<p>Curmudgeon - i wasn't knocking Rhodes, I was trying to say I didn't think that their particular required course covered enough American history, government and world affairs to be the cause of the numbers. I was also raising the question that others raised - could these findings be related to core curricula, distribution requirements of the colleges (or lack thereof) or the most common majors at the various colleges.</p>
<p>I may be old-fashioned, but I actually think colleges should teach a little American history, and using current events in general to springboard discussion (as opposed to the professor's pet cause celebre) helps develop good citizens. I'm not defending the study, most of these survey things are so full of methodologic holes as to be almost useless - I wonder how we would do if we took the survey?? - but I do think that re-emphasizing basic knowledge should not completely stop with high school.</p>
<p>Can't you look at the survey a different way?? Rhodes is a great school, but Curmudge's daughter is the absolute cream of the crop, the majority of Rhodes students would have had no chance at Harvard or Yale. Rhodes takes their average student and brings them up to the average (roughly) of the Harvard and Yale seniors by the time of graduation - isn't that doing a good job?</p>
<p>Citizenship education is a lifelong thing - some of the questions quoted are more current events than anything else - I guess that's why I raised my kids to be paper readers.</p>
<p>Why should colleges teach "a little American history"? Students are free to take courses they want, including a prof's pet cause celebre. And, for what it's worth, today's pet cause celebre is not yesterday's or tomorrow. Who, even ten years ago, would have cared anything about the Taliban or the Ba'ath Party except profs with their pet cause celebre? </p>
<p>Citizenship is a lifelong thing--agreed. And good citizenship requires not just knowing about the Constitution, but also to be scientifically literate so one can discuss issues such as DNA, stem cell research; to have some passing acquaintance with statistics, so that one can evaluate the silly survey that launch this discussion; to be able to write English properly, etc... Why privilege American history in all this? A lot of our ideas and liberties did not originate in the US but elsewhere. Think Magna Carta, habeas corpus to start with.</p>
<p>wisteria, Did Jay Leno administer the survey? I swear I saw him on TV doing exactly as you described! Most of the people he surveyed were unable to answer the most simple question correctly. It was hilarious!</p>
<p>Ok, privilege American history because the majority of those in American colleges are Americans, and that old chestnut is still true - those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. I actually believe in core curriculum to a greater extent than most on this board. And, heresy of heresies, I think that covering the basics of science and government (theory) economics and history and literature are probably even more important for our best and brightest than for the average college student.
Now, again, this survey is likely full of holes, and a well-educated, news savvy adult with an interest in history would probably only make 60% on the stupid thing - that's not my point. I think that there is a body of knowledge that a well educated adult should have, and I don't think that it is too much to ask our best and brightest to spend one class period over the course of a year or two discussing, debating, writing papers, and if necessary educating themselves (if they didn't absorb enough lit or Amer history or philosophy in high school) in this body of knowledge and how it applies to the world. Some would say that's what they should do in high school, but my answer to that is they aren't really young adults yet in high school, there is value to all of us for that conversation to go on at a higher level, if you will, in those kids' lives. And, yes, I think things like science ethics has a part to play in that conversation.</p>
<p>Frankly, you're asking for curricular overload. </p>
<p>APUSH IS supposed to be a college level course. But APUSH will not teach you about Magna Carta or habeas corpus or Athenian democracy, or Plato's Republic, or....a couple of millennia of Western Civ, let alone the information needed to be a citizen of the world.
Quick, when did the Communists triumph in China? Where is Kashmir? Where, for that matter, is Pakistan? And what's all the fuss about Communism? Nazism? Fascism? the Holocaust? All that happened somewhere else.
Yes indeed, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. For that, a study of Iran and Afghanistan, among other current hot spots will actually be far more instructive than another (even improved) survey of American history.
A study of Africa will also shed much light on the tragey of Darfur.</p>
<p>And that's before students learn what they need to learn to call themselves math majors or biology majors, and so on.</p>
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Ok, privilege American history because the majority of those in American colleges are Americans, and that old chestnut is still true - those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
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<p>I would add that there is a case for privileging American history at American colleges because the US taxpayers, in a variety of ways, are footing a substantial chunk of college operating costs--via government student aid, via research grants, via the implicit subsidies in the tax deductibility of donations to colleges, etc.</p>
<p>As it is, a few years ago, our elected officials in Congress mandated that </p>
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Each educational institution that receives Federal funds for a fiscal year shall hold an educational program on the United States Constitution on September 17 of such year for the students served by the educational institution.
<p>EDIT: As a practical matter, this can lead to some rather interesting sequellae. E.g., a beauty school where students are eligible for Pell grants and Federal student loans is somehow supposed to provide an educational program to their students on the Constitution on September 17.</p>
<p>Actually, anybody who bothered to read the papers last week would have gotten a course in Constitutional issues without having to attend a whole class on it.</p>
<p>The problem with privileging American history in colleges after privileging it (quite rightly) in high school, is that it does not leave much room for understanding the world we live in.<br>
If we have learned anything from recent events it is that even for a continental country such as the US, borders are porous, we cannot ignore what happens elsewhere. Our money is flowing out to China, our troops are bogged down in the Middle East, illegal immigration continues to be a problem, our car industry is being overtaken by Japan.</p>
<p>I don't expect high schools to offer courses on the Middle East, or China or Japan or....
but I do expect them to offer courses on American history. Which is precisely why I would not want to mandate a course on American history at the college level. There's too much left of the world that an informed citizen should know about.</p>