To some extent - not entirely - it's just that the ideas of general knowledge were different. - Edit 1
Before modification by Legolas at 23/09/2015 06:25:55 PM
View original postI have absolutely no idea where that conclusion comes from. People feel qualified to proclaim opinions, because it jibes with that thing they heard on TV that one time. And yes, I am aware of the irony in the context of my original post, but I am just citing the most recent incident in a long history of such things which I feel represents the current popular mindset.
It was admittedly not very clear. One of my points is that, in the USA as well as elsewhere in the Western world, far more people now have college degrees than a generation or two ago - in that sense education has indisputably improved. And is it so crazy to suggest that that might be one of the reasons why people are more confident to express opinions, however stupid, on topics outside their field of study as well, where in the past they might not have known any better but just wouldn't have spoken up about it?
View original postJust as an anecdotal example, I had my American history class in high school attempt to read selections from the Federalist Papers, and it was like banging my head against a wall. Those papers themselves, written to persuade the general electorate of the efficacy of the constitution, cited a broad range of historical examples and precedents that would have many contemporary graduate students scrambling for references. The expectations at the time on what constituted general knowledge were simply higher. I had, by the time we got around to American history, a sufficiently low opinion of my students that I considered it par for the course that they could not identify all 50 states of the US on a blank map, or list the Presidents in order (just in order, not even asking them to list their years in office or parties or VPs or anything like that - merely to get the sequence correct). It was much more surprising that everyone ELSE believed I was expecting a bit much from high school SENIORS, as well as Freshmen (some subjects, like the humanities, which didn't depend on prior knowledge, were rotated so the whole school took them in the same year, to save on books & teachers and whatnot), or that most people CANNOT name those things offhand. I thought the "Friends" episode, where they spent all of a Thanksgiving gathering driving themselves nuts trying to list all the states was the usual later-season stupidifying of the characters, until my sister proposed a similar game during one vacation, claiming it always stumped everyone at parties. My elementary school expected third graders to remember the presidents in order. My father, when working as a municipal zoning officer, used the phrase "Cross the Rubicon" at work, and was met by incomprehension from his coworkers. He asked around the Town Hall, and found that NOT ONE PERSON involved in the municipal government of a prosperous suburban industrial/commercial town, knew either the general meaning nor the origin of the phrase. In our education system, that was 3rd to 5th grade knowledge. I definitely recall learning it before I was ten, but I was a history buff even back then, relatively speaking. It was still in the set of books that we used for grammar school.
I am, like you, a history and geography buff and would certainly like to see people's knowledge on those topics improved. I too would shake my head in dismay at the Rubicon thing. But on the other hand I'm also pragmatic enough to see that some (not all!) of that knowledge is not all that useful anymore, if it ever was, in the Internet age. What, exactly, is the point of knowing all the presidents in order if you don't know anything else about them? And given limited studying time / resources, doesn't it make more sense to learn only 10 or 15 presidents, but with more useful knowledge about each one, instead?
For sure people several generations ago - at least, the well-educated ones, which was a more limited group than it is today - knew far more about many topics, including Classical History. Then again, they generally knew jack all about the history of most non-Western cultures, and were probably also less able in various skills that are very important in modern (humanities) education, like critical analysis of sources, analysis of large amounts of data, efficient group cooperation techniques, and the like.
Pure knowledge of facts has become less vital in today's society, so it's not wrong to push it down the priority list. But of course the point remains that even in the Internet age, you need enough factual knowledge to have a basic frame of reference allowing you to interpret the facts you look up - you don't necessarily have to know if Columbus discovered America in 1492 or in 1502, but you do need to have a basic idea of what happened in European and in American history before that discovery, and what came after.
View original postWhen I took geometry in my sophomore year of high school, I paid little attention when we came to circles, because I was bored, having learned it all already in 5th grade. I was among the last students to finish the test on that section, and I got back an abysmally low grade. When I spoke with the teach about it, it turned out I got every problem right, but because I solved for Pi, like I had done in 5th grade, the teacher had no idea what my answers were. In other words, when they asked for the area of a circle with a diameter of 4, the teacher was looking for 4pi, while I gave 12.57 (i.e. 4 x 3.1416). My 5th grade teacher expected more math work than did my 10th grade teacher. This was at Don Bosco Prep, which for all that its current national reputation is about football, was primarily academic, and intensely focused on getting its students into college.
I have to agree that the area of a circle doesn't seem like something you should be spending time on anymore in the sophomore year of HS. But then, it has struck me before that the maths part of the SAT, as far as the content goes, seems more suitable for a freshman or sophomore year; it's the pressure and time stress that will hurt you.
View original postYou would be right in your suspicions, seeing as how Obama himself has been quoted as mentioning "all 57 states". Also, I strongly suspect that poll is bullshit. I'd really like to see what the actual question asked was, that was reported as "thinks he's a Muslim."
I was curious too, so I looked it up. See link, page 32. Study was done among 1012 adults nationwide, by phone, the relevant sampling errors are 5-6%. The actual question was:
"Do you happen to know what religion Barack Obama is? Is he Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, Muslim, something else or not religious?"
What's even more baffling is that 15% of Democrats also answered that he was a Muslim. And 5% of those 18-34 years old figured he was a Mormon, for some reason.