Study: Americans Don’t Know Much About History

There’s an epidemic of historical and political ignorance, says report

A majority of Americans from all backgrounds struggled to come up with the correct answers in a quiz about American history by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI). More than 2,500 randomly selected Americans took ISI’s basic 33 question test on civic literacy and 71% of them received an average score of 49% or an “F.”

The quiz reveals that over twice as many people know Paula Abdul was a judge on American Idol than know that the phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people” comes from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

The study finds that only half of U.S. adults can name all three branches of government, and just 54% know that the power to declare war belongs to Congress. Almost 40% incorrectly said that it belongs to the president.

Those who have held elected office lack civic knowledge; 43% do not know the Electoral College is a constitutionally mandated assembly that elects the president. One in five thinks it “trains those aspiring for higher office” or “was established to supervise the first televised presidential debates.”

“There is an epidemic of economic, political, and historical ignorance in our country,” says Josiah Bunting, III, Chairman of ISI’s National Civic Literacy Board. “It is disturbing enough that the general public failed ISI’s civic literacy test, but when you consider the even more dismal scores of elected officials, you have to be concerned. How can political leaders make informed decisions if they don’t understand the American experience? Colleges can, and should, play an important role in curing this national epidemic of ignorance.”

How well do you know your American history?  You can take the Civics Quiz by clicking on the link below.

Click here to take the quiz.

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Study-Americans-Dont-Know-About-Much-About-History.html

The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

This video is just a brief introduction to a very serious subject. There are six books listed at the end which will go much further into the subject.

Video by Neal Fox  To see/hear more of Neal’s work go to http://www.TheRealNealFox.com and http://www.TheArtOffensive.com

Pros and Cons of Social Media in Education

By Justin Marquis Ph.D.  http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2012/02/pros-and-cons-of-social-media-in-education/

10 Most Controversial Excerpts Taken from American Textbooks

Americans can’t seem to agree on anything anymore. It’s always war between left versus right, 99 % versus 1 %, gays versus straights. And like any war, children sometimes get caught in the crossfire. One of the latest battlegrounds is the classroom, and the spoils of victory are the hearts and minds of little learners. Debate rages among school boards across the land over what to leave out of textbooks, what to include, and how exactly to word it, which is ironic because everyone knows one of the hallmarks of being an American adult is forgetting everything you learned in school. Oh well; here are 10 textbook passages clothed with controversy.

1. “Explain how Arab rejection of the State of Israel has led to ongoing conflict.”

   We could make this entire list solely out of controversial excerpts from textbooks from the Lone Star State, but we’ll limit ourselves to two (see next). It would be hard to find an example of an issue that divides people around the world more than the events of Palestine in the last 50 years. With one fell swoop, this loaded discussion question from a world history book places the entire blame for the Arab-Israeli conflict on Arab people. It’s akin to saying, “Explain how colonial America’s rejection of the British Empire led to years of conflict.”

2. “Explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone.”

   This Texas history book excerpt deals with major philosophers whose ideas were crucial to political revolutions since 1750. The question used to include one man’s name at the end of the list: the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence. That’s right, they cut American icon Thomas Jefferson from a book about history. Instead, Protestant superhero John Calvin was added, the argument being Jefferson cribbed many of his ideas from Calvin and others.

3. “Men had many more rights than women. Unless there were no sons in a family, only a man could inherit property. Only men could go to school or become priests.”

   In 2005, the State of California began to hear grumblings from members of the Hindu community about the representation of their religion in school history books. Among other complaints, they preferred the history of women’s rights in their culture be set in a better light. Their suggested revision spoke of men’s “different rights” and how women weren’t prevented from learning, but that their education “was mostly done at home.” Multiple experts called it a deliberate attempt to distort the record books.

4. “Egyptian records from the time don’t mention the Exodus of the Israelite slaves. And archaeology hasn’t uncovered any evidence of their years in Egypt or of their dramatic departure.”

   This was another headache Oxford University Press created for California around the time they were ticking off Hindus. Although Jews did not dispute this statement in a sixth-grade social studies book Oxford was offering, they were perturbed that such figurative asterisks were not placed next to discussions of major events in other faiths. The board of education rejected the book after opponents from the Jewish community complained.

5. “Christian worldview … is the only correct view of reality; anyone who rejects it will not only fail to reach heaven but also fail to see the world as it truly is.”

   Homeschools are one of the last bastions of biology materials that espouse creationism. This doozy of a sentence appeared in Biology: Third Edition, printed by Bob Jones University Press. As inflammatory as the line is, because the majority of homeschoolers are fundamentalist Christians, there hasn’t been a major outcry against it. But non-Christian parents teaching their kids at home have a devil of a time finding Big Bang books.

6. “This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things, such as plants, animals, and humans.”

   The South would be the other place you can still find Darwin disagreement. Although they’ve since modified their stance, in 1996 and 2001 the Alabama Board of Education ordered a sticker be attached to all public school biology textbooks clarifying evolution as a “controversial theory.” The label went on to say, “any statement about life’s origins should be considered as theory, not fact.” The 2005 version of the sticker removed the word “controversial.”

7. “Then there was a dreadful scream, and there glaring at her in the doorway stood the Witch of the Future…”

   What started in Chicago suburbs in 1991 as a parent crusade against an elementary reader was taken up by national conservative groups like Focus on the Family. Their anger was directed at the “Impressions” line of children’s textbooks because they included stories like “The Witch and the Rainbow Cat,” about a young girl who gets trapped in a witch’s cabin. The issue became a hot-button topic in Chitown, and boy, were the school board elections crazy in ’92.

8. “All praise is due to Allah that I moved to Boston when I did. If I hadn’t, I’d probably still be a brainwashed black Christian.”

   In 1974, the school board in West Virginia’s Kanawha County was tasked by the state with promoting more diversity in their textbooks. When this quote from Malcolm X’s autobiography was discovered in the language arts books the board had committed to buy, there was an uproar. One thousand people protested the meeting where the board finalized the book purchase. Then 12,000 people signed a petition to ban the book from schools. Three thousand coalminers went on strike. Dynamite was thrown. People were shot. But the books stayed.

9. “Scholars of the People of the Book know that Islam is the true path because they find it in their books. But they shy away out of ignorance and stubbornness. And God knows their deeds and will judge them.”

   The Islamic Academy in Virginia had already been the source of a study by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that found the school’s textbooks promoted discrimination against non-Muslims. This quote is supposedly one of the results of a move toward tolerance in the books. It appears in a book for 11th-graders and basically condemns all Christians and Jews.

10. “We want you to help clean the weapons and fight the Russians in jihad.”

    Technically qualifying as American textbooks because they were produced by the University of Nebraska, in the late ’80s, millions of textbooks were sent to Afghan children to try to turn them against the Communists while teaching them math and language skills. The books were a blatant attempt to mix education with propaganda, as the primers were illustrated with pictures of tanks and assault rifles and math equations like “5 guns + 5 guns = 10 guns.” It’s still a controversial moment in the history of education in this country.

    http://www.bachelorsdegreeonline.com/blog/2012/10-most-controversial-excerpts-taken-from-american-textbooks/

Compliments fly as Kenny meets Monti in Rome

PADDY AGNEW in Rome

IT WAS a day when old acquaintances simply could not say enough good things about one another. When Taoiseach Enda Kenny met his Italian opposite number Mario Monti at Palazzo Chigi, government house, yesterday, the reciprocal compliments flew through the sunny Rome air.

Mr Monti described the Taoiseach as the “author of an important turning point” in the Irish economy, while the Taoiseach underlined on at least three occasions just how Mr Monti had “restored the reputation of Italy”, repositioning Italy right at the very heart of the EU economic debate.

It was all rather a change from the last time, back in May 2004, when a taoiseach travelled to Rome for a bilateral with the Italian prime minister. On that occasion, the two protagonists, Messrs Berlusconi and Ahern, probably spent more time considering AC Milan’s Champions League form than the EU’s balance sheet.

The fact that eight years have past since the last Italian-Irish bilateral possibly says much about the failings of recent ruling regimes. Yesterday, both leaders were keen to stress their common vision for the immediate future of the EU, a vision that includes job creation initiatives as much as austerity.

Mr Monti expressed his satisfaction that Ireland was one of those 12 countries (France and Germany excluded) that, in view of next week’s EU summit, had signed a letter to EU presidents Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso, calling for a set of growth-related measures.

Mr Kenny, who has known Mr Monti since the latter’s mid-1990s days as a European commissioner, emphasised Mr Monti’s European pedigree, clearly suggesting that this is one dude to whom everybody listens, Merkel and Sarkozy included.

One had the distinct sensation that the EU “B” team, ie the Minnows, may well have found itself a charismatic, heavyweight centre-forward for its forthcoming battles with the “A” team, ie Merkozy.

In that context, the Taoiseach pointed out that at his meeting with the German chancellor on Thursday, he had stressed the need for “strong firewalls to prevent contagion”, in the process using almost exactly the same words as Mr Monti did last week.
All in all, it was a very satisfied Taoiseach who met the media yesterday morning, reporting on this week’s meetings with senior partners, Italy and Germany, saying: “Both were very good meetings and in both I gave an update of the actions taken by the Irish Government in respect of addressing our public finance problem and in respect of dealing with our agenda for growth and jobs . . . I also reported on the preparatory work . . . prior to Ireland holding the EU presidency for the first half of 2013 and some of issues we would like to raise and deal with during that presidency . . . ”

The Taoiseach also stressed the importance of EU leaders meeting “outside the formality of EU Council meetings” in a context where a more “normal” discussion might take place.

The Monti government, he said, was very “open and accessible”. As we said, it was a day when the compliments were flying.

Article by: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2012/0225/1224312370589.html?via=rel

Images by: Bob Newman ebookcashstreams.com