And according to a new statewide study, thousands of Massachusetts public high school graduates arrive at college unprepared for even the most basic math and English classes, forcing them to take remedial courses that discourage many from staying in school. At three high schools in Boston and two in Worcester, at least 70 percent of students were forced to take at least one remedial class because they scored poorly on a college placement test.
Other studies sadly point in the same direction. One showed that a majority of college students thinks the press has too much freedom. Another found that they believe the freedoms of American Muslims should be restricted. Still another found that a majority of high school graduates couldn’t find China on a map.
And year after year, America’s knowledge scores vis a vis other industrialized democracies keeps going south.
The totally predictable result is, as David Brooks pointed out in a recent New York Times column, “For the first time in the nation’s history, workers retiring from the labor force are better educated than the ones coming in.”
Lately, amidst our xenophobic immigration debate, there’s been lots of chatter about the new test the government is proposing to determine which immigrants qualify for naturalized U.S. citizenship.
The Los Angeles Times’ Rosa Brooks writes, tongue in cheek, that it “will rigorously assess immigrants' knowledge of ‘the fundamental concepts of American democracy’," asking tough questions such as ‘Why do we have three branches of government? , ‘What is the rule of law?’ and ‘What are inalienable rights’? ”
Ms. Brooks says that requiring those who want the privileges of U.S. citizenship to have some minimal knowledge of American civics “is a great idea.” Why, she asks, “should this country mint new so-called citizens who don't know the first thing about American history or law?”
Her zinger, however, is that she wants to make native-born Americans take the test too — and deport them to their last known countries of ancestry if they flunk. Why, she asks, “should we ask first-generation immigrants to know more about the United States than the rest of us?”
Why indeed!
Do we have reason to hope that the millions of young people who have flocked to support Barack Obama’s candidacy represent some kind of a sea change among our youth?
No, we don’t.
These young people are “the best and the brightest” – far above the norm. A vastly greater number of American young people are high school dropouts, or kids who graduate from high school despite being functionally illiterate, or even those who go on to college clueless about their country’s history and government.
These are the young people who click on YouTube to amass an encyclopedic knowledge of Paris Hilton’s latest antics.
And despite the Bush Administration’s overblown claims of success for its “No Child Left Behind” program, these are the millions of kids who continue to be left behind. And who leave our country behind in the process.
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