On the front page, the Times gave the quiz to five sample citizens, and their answers and photos didn’t make it into the online edition. Here – transcribed verbatim -are their names, ages, scores, and comments – which Porcupine feels illustrates his point about Civics instruction.
Don Knaub, 69, Spectrum Art Gallery Manager – 8 correct – “I think those are things that everybody ought to know to become a citizen.”
Elizabeth Arsenault, 72, Tourist from Maine – 7 correct – “I think they were fine. They weren’t hard.”
Jane Walsh, 41, Red Fish Blue Fish Gallery Manager – 6 correct – “Terrorists might know all this stuff, but that doesn’t mean we want them here.”
Hector Buzio, 33, Chef at Alberto’s Ristorante – 4 correct – “I just wasn’t quite sure. I’d have to study a book.”
Adam Campbell, 16, Sturgis Charter School Student – “I think it’s unfair because it’s not information you need to live in the US.”
Can you SEE the de-evolution of civic understanding, engagement, and aptitude and how it matches the timeline of the de-emphasis of Civics instruction?
Who needs civics when you get your funding without appropriation?
From the best and most motivated to ignorant and apathetic.
an appropriate mantra for anyone who understands the funding scheme for Commonwealth Charter Schools.
I’m all for mandatory civics in high school. But Peter, how much will it cost and will you support measures to adequately fund the program?
As Iris will tell you at great length, Civics is ALREADY taught on a optional basis, part of the curriculum, tools and books already exist, etc. Ergo, making it a graduation requirement merely means eliminating ONE semester of elective selection. A scheduling change is the only cost of this ‘mandate’ according to the teachers who have posted about this.
…not to imply ill motives to Iris…but I can’t help but chuckle at you taking the word of a card carrying member of a teacher’s union about the cost of any program.
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I saw that early posting and I’m still scrathing my head to understand how it will only cost a “scheduling change”? I mean, by definition an elective course means not everyone is taking it. And I’ll bet that, at best, 30 % of students are currently taking the elective. That means we’d have to increase resources for civics courses by 200%. Who loses in this zero sum world? Are we laying off a art teacher to hire more civics teachers? I doubt we have enough social studies teachers currently for them to handle the new work load.
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Again, I’d be in favor of civics being a requirement for graduation. But I think it’s going to take more resources than a scheduling change. And yes Peter, I do enjoy tweeking you–your advocating yet another nanny-state requirement; creating yet one more big government mandated expense for local school systems without any money to pay for it and–best of all–your becoming a pawn for the teachers union quest to add more teachers and thereby generating more union dues. You are such a enabler of the secularist, tax and spend liberal elite.
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Maybe we can hire part-time civics teachers and allow them to pay into the pension system. That way if all the local selectman jobs are filled, a lazy hack could work $3000 a year teaching civics part-time for 27 years, then get a state job at $100,000 a year for the top three pension pay. You never what happens in the Massachusets political world of unintended consquences.
specifically. Can you find where I did and refresh my aging memory?
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My issues are not cost but efficacy.
…but it is Peter who used your writings to justify yet another unfunded mandate. So sorry to drag you down into this…
It shouldn’t cost too much, if you’re going to put civics into the curriculum in Mass., you’re going to have to take something out in order to make room.
Did young master Campbell get none correct, or was it an accident that no score is shown for him?
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(10, by the way, those were pretty easy, and I’m younger than four out of five of your examples.)
I got all of them on the mini quiz to. Whatever.
That’s still pretty appalling, but not quite as apocalyptically bad as zero. And hey, there’s still time for him to learn before he gets to vote, unlike the others.
I got 9 out of 10, but am too humiiated to post which one I got wrong.
Also humiliated that I misspelled “humiliated”.