OCR Text |
Show I PREPARE FOR CITIZENSHIP BY STUDYING CURRENT HISTORY Foggy Notions and Blank Ignorance or' High School Students Is Appalling, Says Review i H of Institute for Public t Service M lal i iapat i , .-b. IV Would I..n- HV more than 4T r,,r cent tn a current problem! Of national oncorn lo Ills ilne? Would he "have bron b trained 'or citlxenshlp if he had been given q Mnii school course, "Itil model"? Clin education train for bcl- I H iti i IB I I I . urrent history lest, wlm-r, w.-n t-.l.- I last month by ovai 800, I high B I B I country. In all. 79 ejuestlons vr B chow why person". places and prob- M lems of importance were leing cur- Bt rvntly discussed. Persons Included K Lloyd George. Mellon. De Valera and Hs inland; placet Included Arlington. KS where fhr unknown soldier was r n KjBfl opposition to free Ireland. Wet Vlr- B M BBJ jt turea to Identlfj Included Harding BrBB ' BH Included the meaning of "open shop" KBJ and Tshat soldiers were asking con- RjBfl Kress to ghe them. J xi l. l Is ( l. 168. KBt Returns from several schools show IvBBJ i hat the name deflnitenege of memory PBBj and understanding that La expected In BBBj chemistry courses can be obtained in ll e urrent events work. A clasn of 4-1 KBH pupils in a St. Louis eighth grade BBBJ made an average mark of 12 per cent. BBh even- child except one In the class KBP making abeivo 70 per cent; and a sev-e-nth year class of 4 3 children made BgBfl an average of 82 per cent, with only KBfl 6 pupils below the mark of 70 per BBJ BBH But of 1.580,000 possible right an- BBl swers, C 4 8.0 00 or 41 per cent were BBBJ marked right by teachers themselves. BBJ and 93 2.000 or 59 per cent wen- wrong 'ilBBj or unanswered By 20.000 students. JBBB over 90 per cent was scored by 116; IBB irom SO per cent to &9 per cent by BBB Zi 2: over 80 per cent by 69S, from BBBJ 70 to 79 per cent by 1,234; over 70 BBBJ per cent by 1,911: under 60 per cent BBBj bj 16.400.' or nearly four-fifths the EEV total number, 'if 200,000 possible BV right unswers to ten questions about --ports and movlei 92,000 or on KHfl per cent were light. BBV "The results," said Julius H. Barnes BBB of the Institute for Public Service. I BBV "show7 not only that 59 per cent of, the answers were cither wrong or EjHf missing, but also that foggy notions BBB and blank ignorant about current B I events are due to miethlng - I" - njv . sides lack of stud-n Interest In the I M subjects themselves, Fewer senior Hj bojs failed on De Valera, Brland. Ba M Leonard "Wood. and Lloyd George H W than on who won the world sen. f the star actor In the Three Muske- ill '-ers More- girl seniors knew about i r i t i Fein and the proposed soldier honuj than about .Suzanne Lenglen V and Ruth Law. When thousands of ithe country's high school stud nts and even graduating classes miss three out . f fl gue-stlons about universally advertised ad-vertised sports, it : hows that liking does not necessarily mean understanding understand-ing or using." i i T- IF-S4 m x i n nil S j The ten questions about out-of-school topics called for definite knowledge of universal front-page and , street-corner figures Babe Ruth's l home runs, winner of the world scries. Mile. Suzapne Lenglen. the small col-lefje col-lefje that defeated Harvard In football. foot-ball. ih star ae-t.,r in The- Three Mus- , keteers, the- be-.st batting average in each of the two big. baseball leagues. Ruth Law. in what games a quartet - jback Is found. Christy Mathewson. jand a much discussed" book whle-h ! gives a detailed story of a small Itown. I Conceding that possibly Robinson 'Crust. e- fras answered to this last question as a Joke, continues the report re-port the fact remains that 48 per cent of the senior- did not think Of Main Street. Conceding that too few questions ques-tions appealed to the spe lal Interest of girls, the fact remains that of senior sen-ior boys 35 per cent ilid not know who won th vrOrld series. 50 per cent did not know how many home runs Babe Ruth made 35 per cent forgot that Centre was the small college which had recently defeated Harvard's Har-vard's football team, and not Yale i Prino ton or Cornell Moreover, 4fi pi r cent of girl seniors did not know tli French woman tennis champion iwho had been 00 universally discussed: dis-cussed: 60 per cent did not know Ruth Law. 32 per cent did not know .the here of an every w here-advertised movie, whlb 7ft per cent did not kneiw Iwho the enl congresswoman Is. KNOWING M BELIEVING, "The significant fact, ' the report I declares, "is not so much the not i knowing at all as the believing wh-it IS entlreiv wrong It Is better never 'to have- heard of Mile. Lectglen than I to sav that she Is a French chemist lor represented Japan at the disarmament disarma-ment conference. er is the only woman wom-an in our congress. It is better to have no blea of Christy Mathewson than to say that h- sold "out-J ho world series in 1920, s d noted eomedistti or went on an expedition to the south pole Such use ,,f opportunity and experience ex-perience never made a Lincoln "That four out of five did not know who ratified 'he pvace treaty with Germany is less serious than that half of them believed Wilson ratified it-Not it-Not to know who was recently appointed ap-pointed chief Justice may not be a menace to democracy, but surely any high school senior Is a llablllt who In 1922 believes that Theodore koose-velt koose-velt or John Marshall has recently been appointed chief Justice. Just what kinds of benefit are favored children getting from high school history, his-tory, or from their other expensive instruction, who believe that Leonard Wood Is governor-general of Philadelphia; Philadel-phia; that Manila is a port In Cuba, that congress has just voted against substituting a reliable tax for a total tax; that Stlnnes is leader of the Kluj j ICIux Klan; De Valera an Italian gen-1 eral: Lloyd' Oeorge king of England, and Pershing a French general visit -'ing America or a renowned general In ' our Civil war?" SPECIAL si I in A special study was. made of 72 college freshmen to find" out why they msde an average mark of only 43 per I cent with only 7 students scoring : more than 70 per cent, 29 do not read I a dally paper, 15 never read a magazines mag-azines of current history'- One col-ilege col-ilege cluss that spends 4 5 minutes every ev-ery week on current topics made an average of 71 per cent, another giving 40 minutes a week mude 47 per cent. If teachers thomselvea do not read nd learn definitely current history' 'importance, their students can hard-! hard-! Iv be cxpectt-el to do so. In one normal nor-mal school Bib students who will next year teach 635 clas-e averaged 25 per cent. one student out of the entlr clasi made more than 7n per cent Another state teacher training school with 60 students made an average of 35 pcrcent. In this second national current history his-tory test low grades cannot bw explained ex-plained by inattention at sfchool, for the average tim which 20,400 students stu-dents are spending on current events is 4" minutes a week. Thut over 200,000 in school and college took this one test shows nationwide attention. I I I N 1 KM SCfl MM, Is Jt has cost from two lo three million mil-lion elollara in money and time. sas the report, to educate the 1.000 high school seniors of whom 630 did not know the meaning ef "opt-n shop"; 250 could net mention an Item of current cur-rent inteiest connected with Washington Wash-ington where a disarmament conference confer-ence was in session. 970 could not recognize the picture of the United States commissioner of education; 690 could not recognize Root; 490 did not know who H. ;. Wells is; 800 did not kmnv i he much advertlaeel federal Budget Director Dawes; 430 did not know that Hoover v.as chairman of the national unemployment confer-snOJ confer-snOJ although schools all over the country had accepted the chairman's Invitation to co-operate ami almost 1,-000 1,-000 were unable to mention two suggestions sug-gestions made by that conference. 'What does it mean that three of hundred high school seniors do not know who Pershing is." aske Mr. Barnes in concluding the report, "and that four out of a hundred cannot recognize a picture of President. Harding Hard-ing ? With such lmpervlousness to Important facts and problems that are everywhere In the air, what are they doing with science, geography and history taught In schools 1 If our government gov-ernment and Mr. Ford can get nitrogen nitro-gen out of the air at Muscle Shoals, surely there is some way that proper training In newspaper reading can get ahead and tall out of important current hlstorv PI KPOSK OF TESTS. "If the only purpose of a current history test were to find out what it Is easy for young people to answer, It must bo ndmltletl that a 41 per cent average by 20.000 high school children chil-dren In all parts of the country shows a too-hard examination From the standpoint of a business man. however, how-ever, the failure of 71 per cent of fhe countrv's picked young people, to know who their own state s school executive ex-ecutive is docs not prove it a mistake for a test to ask w ho that executive is, on the contrary It suggests the desirability de-sirability of expecting high school students to know about state school pollcie. For over 60 per cent of high school seniors who will vote in three years not to know who Is secretor of the treasury at this critical time when problem-i affecting the whole world depend for solution largely upon up-on his leadership, surely proves tho wisdom of having this eiuestton in a teat and of high school training which enables pupils to answer the question. ques-tion. .... "The first step In training students to studv current events properly la for schools to require that current events bo taught properly not merely to stimulate imagination but to train In iiualitics and Interests that mako for Informed and straight thinking citizenship." citi-zenship." r.n |