College fails to teach civic knowledge - including American history and national institutions - and has an influence on liberal leanings among students, a new study says.
If college graduates aren’t learning about concrete aspects of the American republic, what else might they be picking-up “civics-wise” while on campus?
The study, conducted by the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute, specifically cited typically liberal positions on gay marriage and school prayer.
-- From "College Professors Are More Likely to Believe ‘Ten Commandments are Irrelevant Today,' New Study Says" by Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor CNSNews.com 2/22/10
College professors are more likely than the average person to believe that the Ten Commandments are irrelevant today -- and to think that America is a corrupting influence on good people, according to a new study released Monday.
Those who teach on American college campuses are more likely to agree with the statements "America corrupts otherwise good people" and "The Ten Commandments are irrelevant today," according to the report, which was unveiled at a news conference at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., conducted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, an educational organization based in Wilmington, Del.
The survey was designed to find out what impact having a college education makes on people’s beliefs.
College professors, according to the report, were also more likely to agree with the statement: “Educators should instill more doubt in students and reject certainty."
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From "Study finds lack of civic learning in college" by Casey Curlin, Washington Times 2/11/10
Richard Brake, the director of ISI's Culture of Enterprise Initiative, said high schools could be partly to blame for a lack of civic knowledge but college courses should provide more concentrated study.
The study tested 2,508 Americans with various education levels on 33 basic civic knowledge questions that included political literacy, American history and economics. The overall average score was 49 percent. College graduates scored at 57 percent. Respondents also answered questions about 39 social issues. The answers were compared with those from a 2006-07 study that tested more than 14,000 college freshmen and seniors on similar issues.
Mr. Brake said college students scored better on questions relating to the history of the 1900s, including those involving Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. He added that this is some indication of the focus of study in the classroom.
One portion of the study found that 58 percent of Americans ages 18 to 24 compared with 68 percent ages 45 to 64 disagreed that America corrupts otherwise good people.
The study shows a correlation between college education and an increase in liberal opinions on four polarizing social issues.
Of those whose education has not extended beyond high school, 24.6 percent believed gay couples should be allowed to legally marry. That compares with 39.1 percent of respondents with college degrees. More than half - 56.6 percent - of those with a high school education, compared with 39.4 percent of those with a college education, thought public school teachers should be allowed to lead prayer at public schools.
The report also found that 74.2 percent of those with a high school education agreed that the Bible is the Word of God, while 63.5 percent of those with college education agreed.
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From "Dumb and Dumber? What Are College Kids Learning About Our Country?" by Dr. Richard Brake, Co-Chair of ISI’s National Civic Literacy Board, posted at FOXNews.com 2/10/10
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.
. . . does earning a college degree influence whether a graduate believes that America a) is a model of freedom and justice for the world, or b) corrupts otherwise good people? By graduating from college, are you more or less likely to support abortion-on-demand or same-sex marriage? What about the contemporary relevance of the Ten Commandments or America’s founding documents? Does college make a citizen more certain that economic prosperity depends upon entrepreneurs and free markets, or that global capitalism produces only a few winners and many losers? Finally, does college push a graduate toward identifying more with the conservative/Republican end of the political spectrum, or the liberal/Democrat pole?
. . . the 1999 NAASS survey showed that in terms of partisanship and ideology, humanities faculty broke down 62% Democrat and 6% Republican and 77% liberal and 8% conservative; social science’s breakdown was 55% D & 7% R and 66% L and 8% C. English faculty led the way in ideological imbalance with 69%D vs. 2%R / 85%L vs. 3%C; but they were followed closely by historians (70-4 & 79-7) and political scientists (58-8 & 79-2). Only economists exhibited some kind of ideological equity, with 36% being Democrat and 43% liberal versus 17% Republican and 27% conservative.
Clearly, American colleges and universities need to do a better job teaching the story of America’s free and prosperous representative democracy, and ISI’s civic literacy research would suggest two areas where we should start. First we should return to a tried and true core curriculum. Second, we should support the restoration of intellectual pluralism—ideologically, methodologically, as well as demographically. Otherwise, it will be hard for the wizards of academia to escape the growing perception that all they are producing are a cadre of intellectual munchkins who share the wizards’ political views.
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