A Generation of Functional and Cultural Illiterates...and a brief quiz...

About 7 years ago, I was a teaching economics to a class of 100 at Keene State College. In order to make a point about ratios, I asked the class, "for instance, how many states are there in the United States?," expecting this would be an easy example that the students could follow. To my utter disbelief, I could not elicit a single correct answer.

"48!....51!....52!" they alternatively called out. When one student answered, "48...no, wait, 49 since they added Puerto Rico!" I gave up.

Had this been an isolated case of weirdness, I could deal with it. But later, at a class at Greenfield Community College, I performed a simple long division problem on the board to explain per capita GDP. After some silence, a student asked, "what's that?" When I explained I was doing long division, she looked perplexed. I explained it further, and she said, "Oh. I've never seen that before." Others had not heard of the words 'litigation' or 'borne.' The majority of each class is unable to calculate the percent change in a statistic. Meanwhile, the overwhelming number of teachers at all levels in Massachusetts complain about the state-administered MCAS exams.

Leading me to wonder..."What in HELL are they doing in public schools these days?"

These kinds of interactions with my college students encouraged me to give a cultural literacy exam to every one of my macroeconomics classes (This is not just some morbid investigation of mine, but an appropriate part of our studies once we start looking at the educational reform movements of the 80s and 90s.) The inability of students to perform basic math without a calculator, or to recall basic historic facts, or to apply well-known literature metaphors to every-day situations, is both terrifying and astounding. In years of giving a 100+ question exam...no one has ever gotten more than one-third correct.

And these are today's voters...and the future leaders of our businesses, technology, and government agencies.

And so, I present below an excerpt of 20 of the questions on that exam. I invite you to try your own hand at them...the answers are all at the end of this post. They range from music and the arts to sports, literature, history, math and science.

In the meantime, I would be remiss if I didn't thank my parents, who highly valued education; the Baldwin (NY) School District where I was educated; and the NY State Regents exams, which help to ensure that we were functionally and culturally literate before we graduated.

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1) In music, what does the notation fortissimo mean?

2) At a corporate board meeting, someone says, "well, we've crossed the Rubicon." What does that mean?

3) What is 30% of 90?

4) What is the origin of the phrase, "the handwriting on the wall?"

5) How many years is the term of a United States Congressman?

6) Where is Prague?

7) Who were the Boers?

8) What is Wounded Knee noted for?

9) What was the Balfour Declaration?

10) Define Xylem and Phloem.

11) Who is Bob Fossey?

12) What are the three 'jewels' of the Triple Crown?

13) What European nation founded the first colony in present-day New York City?

14) The US Constitution states that no one may "be deprived of life, liberty, or..." WHAT? without "due process of law."

15) Who wrote, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood..."

16) What characterizes an "Isosceles Triangle?"

17) How many regular-season games does a major league baseball team play?

18) What was the Maginot Line?

19) What is the opposite side of a ship from 'portside?'

20) What is the chemical symbol for Iron?

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1) Loudest
2) We can't go back (or, we've burned our bridges)
3) 27
4) The Book of Daniel in the Bible
5) 2 years
6) Czech Republic
7) The Dutch settlers of South Africa who instituted the apartheid system
8) The Massacre of unarmed Sioux (Lakota) Indian men, women, and children by the U.S. Calvary, which effectively ended the Plains Indian Wars.
9) The British Declaration establishing and carving the State of Israel out of the British Protectorate of Trans-Jordan in 1948.
10)The structures that transport nutrients and water throughout plants
11) America's most successful choreographer of musical theater
12) The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes.
13) The Netherlands (Holland)
14) Property (NOT 'the pursuit of happiness.' That's in the Declaration of Independence)
15) Robert Frost
16) It has two sides of equal length
17) 162
18) A military line of forts with fixed cannons, built to protect France from Germany. During WWII, Germany simply went around them.
19) Starboard
20) Fe

So...How did you do? ;-)