[lit-ideas] More Student Atrocities
- From: John Wager <johnwager@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 07:16:36 -0500
Once again a message from me to the list seems to have gotten lost somewhere.
Here's the message that was returned; I'm going to try to send again:
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Subject:
Re: [lit-ideas] "the claps of civilization"
From:
John Wager <johnwager@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date:
Mon, 26 Apr 2004 19:28:16 -0500
To:
lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Very depressing but still fun. To see how far we've sunk, take a look at
a 1932 entrance exam to Chicago Normal College. (A "Normal College" was
a college to turn out teachers.) See:
http://academics.triton.edu/uc/1932test.html .
To see how little has changed, take a look at Mark Twain's ENGLISH AS
SHE IS TAUGHT:
http://academics.triton.edu/uc/files/english.html .
It's almost identical to the San Francisco column; some things don't
change. For example, the "claps" of civilization sounds much like what
one student wrote:
"The only form of government in Greece was a limited monkey."
These kind of mistakes are nothing new; the scary thing is that they
USED to be made by 14 year olds. Now the same mistakes are being made by
20 year olds.
JulieReneB@xxxxxxx wrote:
> San Francisco Chronicle Nearing 'the claps of civilization' Jaime
> O'Neill Sunday, April 25, 2004
> A student writes a paper about the practice of clitorectomies in her
> "anthology" class, a class she took last semester. She is still upset
> about what she learned.
> I have known about clitorectomies for a long time, and the practice
> upsets me, too, but I am also upset about how it is possible for a
> student to take and pass a college anthropology class, and still not
> be aware of the name or meaning of the class she has just completed.
> It is so surprising, in fact, that I think it must be a simple
> typographical error. When she makes the same error four more times
> throughout her paper, however, I'm left with the impression that she
> was not taught, or did not learn, the meaning of the prefix in the
> word "anthropology," and probably not the suffix, either.
> When I return the papers, I ask her what class she was referring to in
> her essay, and she says "anthology." I ask what grade she got in the
> class. She says she got an A. On another paper in the stack I am
> returning, a student has written that he sometimes fears he is
> "slipping into the ibis."
> I know just how he feels. Rather like a student a few years ago who
> wrote about her fear that we were nearing "the claps of civilization."
> In another class, I use the word "negligee," but the looks on student
> faces suggest bewilderment. When I ask them if they know the word,
> they don't. I am mystified. Even though I am well aware of the fact
> that the size of the average person's vocabulary has plummeted over
> the past couple of generations, "negligee" would never have struck me
> as an obscure word. The vocabulary of the typical eighth-grader has
> declined from around 25,000 words to 10,000 words, a three-fifths
> decline in the ability to make sense of the world through language.
> Now I know that one of those lost words is "negligee," at least for
> many of my students.
> I make up a brief current events/vocabulary quiz. It's something I do
> periodically as a means of trying to stay in touch with the audience I
> try to reach each week. From my students' answers, I learn that Russia
> is a city in Germany, as is "Belgim." A city in Iraq is "Haidi."
> Another city in Iraq is "Quate." Only three of 31 students can name a
> city in Spain, but in a valiant attempt at guessing, one student says
> that Argentina is a city in that country. Buffalo is a city in Canada,
> and Jordan is a city in Israel. A city in Brazil is "Chilie." Asked to
> name the state that borders on California to the north, one student
> writes "Ohio."
> Only nine out of 31 know who John Kerry is. A couple of students think
> he is an actor, and one thinks he is a serial killer. None knows Karl
> Rove, our shadow president, though one student ventures the guess that
> he must have something to do with "Rove versus Way," the famous
> Supreme Court case. Only two can identify the British prime minister;
> many guess that post is occupied by Prince Charles.
> To close out the quiz, I ask my students how often they read a
> newspaper. Most don't. Ever. One student writes: "I never read a
> newspaper. I don't have money to wast (sic) on it."
> I have been writing about student ignorance for more than 20 years.
> The first piece I wrote on the subject appeared in Newsweek, and it
> prompted lots of media attention, including a segment on "60
> Minutes.'' The media attention helped fuel the "cultural literacy"
> movement that swept education circles during the late '80s and early
> '90s.
> Once all of the symposia had been conducted, the seminars completed,
> the papers written, and the meetings held, it turned out that nothing
> whatsoever was done to institute reform, or to restructure curricula.
> Educational bureaucrats were not able to come to a conclusion as to
> what a baseline knowledge might be, what cultural heritage might be
> worth imparting to the average high school grad.
> Thus it is that none of my students knew where or what Appomattox was.
> Thus it is that Hiroshima and Auschwitz are slipping from national
> consciousness. Thus it is that not a single student could identify
> Robert Frost, arguably the greatest American poet of the last century.
> Thus it is that students leave high school without an interest in the
> wider world they inhabit. Last year, just as we were in the process of
> invading Iraq, one of my students thought that Al-Jazeera, the Arab
> news network, was "Ben" Laden's brother, Al.
> Lately, with the weather warming, I have seen students wearing
> T-shirts emblazoned with the words "Voting is for old people." Given
> their lack of knowledge of history and current events, perhaps it is
> no tragedy that a majority of young people don't bother to vote. But
> what happens to a democracy when so many people opt out, when fewer
> and fewer people bother to inform themselves of what is being done in
> their names? Can a connection be drawn between a know-nothing
> electorate and a know-nothing president? And what kind of nation
> presumes to export democracy by force of arms, and then fails to
> practice that system of government within its own borders?
> It is appalling when students graduate from our high schools with such
> an inadequate understanding of their history or heritage. It should
> shock us that students can be awarded a diploma without even knowing
> where in the world they are. As long as we graduate so many people
> ignorant of so much, we can be fairly sure they will live in a world
> where they learn geography only after they have been shipped overseas
> to fight, and perhaps die, in countries whose names they never heard
> mentioned when they were in school.
> Jaime O'Neill teaches at Butte College near Oroville, in Butte County.
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