Dumb and Dumber?

What Are College Kids Learning About Our Country?

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) released its fourth annual national Civic Literacy report today called "The Shaping of the American Mind: The Diverging Influences of the College Degree & Civic Learning on American Beliefs." In past studies, ISI has broken new ground by demonstrating empirically the failures of colleges and universities to effectively teach their graduates the fundamentals of American history, government, foreign affairs, and economics.

On an individual level, less than 60% (sometimes far less) of college graduates can identify on a multiple-choice test the three branches of government; seminal passages from the Declaration of Independence and Gettysburg Address; basic events from the Revolutionary, Civil, and Vietnam Wars; and the primary features of our free enterprise system. Several of these questions are actually required knowledge for new American citizens, signifying their relevance to what we as a nation demand for informed citizenship.

On an institutional level, ISI discovered that at many of our most elite schools, like Yale, Princeton, Duke, and my alma mater Georgetown, not only did those surveyed fail to get above a “D,” seniors at these top schools did worse than freshmen on the same test, a phenomenon dubbed “negative learning”!

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/02/10/dr-richard-brake-isi-civics-literacy-college-education/