Are Harvard Students Ignorant?
Posted on September 20th, 2007 in Uncategorized |
The New York Sun reignites the debate over curriculum and citizenship, reporting that students at Harvard and elsewhere can not pass a test on basic American history.
Students at many of the country’s most prestigious colleges and universities are graduating with less knowledge of American history, government, and economics than they had as incoming freshmen, with Harvard University seniors scoring a “D+” average on a 60-question multiple-choice exam about civic literacy.
…At universities such as Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Duke, and Berkeley, seniors scored lower on the test, available here, than freshmen, living proof of the broadening relevancy of the old Harvard adage that the university is a storehouse of knowledge because “the freshmen bring so much and the seniors take away so little.
Just in case the above link doesn’t work, here’s the test. If Harvard students can’t pass this thing, the university is really doing something wrong…..
17 Responses
9/20/2007 8:05 am
I absolutely agree with you Richard. Something is very wrong. These are basic, basic questions. And it is amazing that there are historians defending in the Sun article the failure of students to pass the test!
9/20/2007 8:29 am
There is probably also something wrong with the Sun’s survey …
9/20/2007 8:34 am
It’s not the Sun’s survey….
9/20/2007 8:55 am
Crimson reports:
“On average, seniors nationwide answered about 54 percent of the questions correctly. Harvard seniors scored an average of 70 percentâalmost 6 percent higher than freshmen here.”
Which is it?
9/20/2007 9:26 am
I don’t understand your question.
9/20/2007 9:33 am
8:55 failed to understand that Harvard isn’t one of the schools where seniors score worse than freshmen. My guess is that the Harvard seniors do better on the economics questions than the other top-flight schools’ seniors.
The phenomenon of people losing civics knowledge with more education is addressed spectacularly in James Loewen’s “Lies My Teacher Told Me.” But this quiz only approximates that finding.
Richard, I totally disagree with you, and with 8:05. This is a HARD test. (8:05, what was your score?)
I got 59 out of 60 (I missed the last question, about whether defense or social-security spending has been more; I’m not sure I would have been able to sort it out even with a clear definition of ‘payout’).
But this is really very hard, and these are NOT civics questions. These are questions in history and the history of ideas, and some of them border on TRIVIA.
It is not the job of universities to transmit information. It is the job of universities to help kids develop frameworks and analytic tools — and yes, frameworks include facts. But mostly not these facts.
The NY Sun is manufacturing a story, and more or less framing a guilty man. Yes, Harvard students ARE shamefully ignorant about many things. But only about 10 questions on this test are truly shameful to get wrong.
Nonetheless I cannot resist asking –
can anyone beat 59 out of 60?
Standing Eagle
9/20/2007 9:43 am
Here’s a link to the original version of the quiz, which will score it for you.
I agree with Standing Eagle– it’s pretty difficult, and includes more questions related to economics than I expected from a “civis” test, which leads me to wonder about the organization’s agenda.
I scored 83%, so SE is still in the lead.
9/20/2007 4:34 pm
SE thinks history is trivia I guess. The historical questions are absolutely basic and not a single Harvard student should fail to answer them correctly or at least the vast majority of them. What a load of crap about universities not being required to transmit information. I’ve got news for you, SE–you can’t understand the New Deal, the five major interpretations of it, why it mattered and what its legacy was IF YOU DONT KNOW WHEN IT WAS. DUH. Finally, the Sun claims Harvard students scored an average of D+ on the exam. That is inexcusable—sorry, spin it however you want, it just is.
9/20/2007 9:55 pm
Knowing when the New Deal happened is worthless if you think Social Security will quit functioning in 2017, as the President tried to claim at one point.
Important civic knowledge should ideally be laid on a foundation of historical knowledge; but the history is neither necessary nor sufficient.
I think I have at least a little credibility on this, since I DO know all the history and don’t make a fetish of it. This is a time when the duties of citizenship are more urgent than ever (no exaggeration — okay, perhaps since 1862 or so) and more clearly definable than ever. And I don’t think many of them are addressed by the things this quiz measures.
SE
9/20/2007 10:12 pm
SE: Do you have deep disciplinary knowledge of history or are you an ‘afficcionado’
9/21/2007 12:34 am
I scored 60/60 on this test, not because I knew all the answers but because I was able to guess what answer was wanted. A number of these questions are deeply flawed, e.g. number 36 on just war theory. Some just war theory may rely on the authority of a legitimate sovereign, but not all does. But for all the test’s faults, it is hard for me to imagine a person with a reasonable familiarity with U.S. history getting more than six or seven wrong. Thus the scores of Harvard students, if we can believe the reporting, do point to a problem–perhaps as much with high school as with college.
9/21/2007 8:42 pm
It would be a good idea to administer this test to students in Harvard’s professoinal and graduate schools. Just hoping that they score higher than the undergrads.
9/21/2007 8:54 pm
How about giving the test to Harvard professors?
9/22/2007 1:47 pm
SE reveals him/herself with this exchange as not so bright after all. Yes, there is an inherent value in knowing when the New Deal happened no matter what the present (and future) issues are regarding social security. For one thing, it is worth knowing when the U.S. finally signed onto the idea that the govt. had some responsibility for ensuring citizens could enjoy some basic standard of living in old age. It is actually worth “making a fetish” out of knowing some historical facts. Not everyone can establish their role in life as pontificator in chief like SE.
9/22/2007 2:43 pm
Pontificator in Chief. That’s a great expression. I shall use it often.
SE’s gotta be Larry Summers.
9/22/2007 2:45 pm
Whoever SE is he surely has a big EGO. S…E… S uch… E go…SE
9/24/2007 9:14 am
“it is worth knowing when the U.S. finally signed onto the idea that …”
I too believe that this date, like lots of historical knowledge, is worth knowing in an intrinsic way. But you give no reasons to support your claim that this is worth knowing for CIVIC reasons. Someone who doesn’t know this date can be a much more valuable participant in a Social Security debate, if s/he understands how the system WORKS, than someone who does know the date but doesn’t understand the system. In fact, I can virtually guarantee that such a historical ignoramus who really understands policy is a better citizen than the trivia and politics buff who knows all kinds of things about the New Deal and how (i.e., not why) it came to be.
I won’t get into the fact that the word fetish does not mean what you think it means.
Andre the Giant Standing Eagle