Where does your state rank?

Now With More Molecules!:
[Via Balloon Juice]

Q: Is our children learning?

A: No, they is not.

[More]

These questions are taken from the citizenship test required for anyone who wants to become naturalized. Normally at least a 60% is needed to pass. Less than 3% of the students accomplished this.

Only 6 students out of 1000 got even 7 of the questions correct. The 99 percentile students in OK got a 70, barely a C.

Interestingly, there were only 2 questions where ‘I don’t know”‘ was not the number 1 response. Most of the 1000 high school students in Oklahoma knew the Atlantic was off the East coast (Incredibly, 30 students put the Indian Ocean). Most knew that George Washington was the first President, although Abe Lincoln came in a close second.

51% did not know who was in charge of the Executive Branch and 58% did not know what were the two parts of the Congress.

Only 4 states spend less per student than OK. Only Idaho and Utah spend less on salaries than OK. 40% of students entering college in OK need remedial coursework. Perhaps there is a correlation.

It certainly makes me worry about the ability of OK to provide what is needed for a functioning democracy. But I fear this is not only a problem for OK. There is a continuing trend to denigrate education in this country, to call anyone who is informed an elitist, to claim that there is no real need to know any of this stuff.

Jefferson wrote, “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government” and “Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree.”

Who benefits from a poorly educated citizenry? The same that have always benefited throughout the ages. They are easy to find.

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