Civic dumbness marches on

The National Civic Literacy Board issued this year's report on basic civic knowledge for Americans. Students from 50 schools, 14,000 freshman and seniors, were tested. The test itself can be found HERE. Below are test results of the top 19. The quick result: is money and family can't stop you from being stupid.

Of note, the report states, Cornell leads the nation in the negative learning stats - the seniors score lower than the freshman. [Perhaps, brighter one's transfer out.] Its students scored 56%, about the same as Harvard law students bar passage rate in NY when I took the test.

Generally, the higher U.S. News & World Report ranks a college, the lower it ranks here in civic learning. At four colleges U.S. News ranked in its top 12 (Cornell, Yale, Duke, and Princeton), seniors scored lower than freshmen. These colleges are elite centers of “negative learning.” Cornell was the third-worst performer last year and the worst this year.

In fairness to these self-proclaimed great schools, facts are not that important when dealing with how one feels about the earth and the trees and mean Mr. Bush. Two weeks ago, I got a nice cappuccino near Cornell. This study is picky, picky.

I suppose it is scary to realize that Yale is the queen bee of our intelligence community.

The negative learning bespeaks an interesting curriculum for our rich dumb kids who need jobs working for the government right away. Of note, smaller schools and private schools showed the best increase in learning, though the entering students had much lower results than the preppy colleges. Now, how to get the better students to go to schools that actually teach rather than pretend?

Seems like, if you want a good future for your children, is to study the high school choices. Or, better, home school

Here are the grades and, check the site, the questions are not that hard:

1.	Harvard University	69.56%
2.	Grove City College (PA)	67.26
3.	Washington & Lee University (VA)	66.98
4.	Yale University	65.85
5.	Brown University	65.64
6.	University of Virginia	65.28
7.	Wheaton College (IL)	64.98
8.	University of Pennsylvania	63.49
9.	Duke University	63.41
10.	Bowdoin College (ME)	62.86
11.	Princeton University	61.90
12.	University of Notre Dame	61.25
13.	Rhodes College (TN)	61.18
14.	Smith College (MA)	60.07
15.	University of Rochester (NY)*	59.32
16.	University of Wisconsin	57.87
17.	University of Georgia*	57.76
18.	University of North Carolina	57.68
19.	Cornell University	56.95

Here is a good point:

4: Are College Trustees Getting Their Money’s Worth from College Presidents?

Six of the 10 worst-performing colleges also ranked among the top 10 for the salaries they paid their presidents. These include Penn, Cornell, Yale, Princeton, Rutgers and Duke, which paid their presidents $500,000 or more.

I may as well list the best schools for increasing knowledge:

Eastern Connecticut State, one of 25 colleges randomly selected for this year’s survey, was the best performer, increasing civic knowledge by 9.65 points. Rhodes College, which increased civic knowledge by 7.42 points, was the best performer among 18 elite colleges surveyed both this year and last. Rhodes was also the best overall performer last year.

Yeah, but a graduate from Rhodes, wherever that is, won't get a job from a Harvard boss. If you have a child working toward college, consider:

U.S. News & World Report's
"America's Best Colleges"
Grove City College ranked No. 1 Best Value and is consistently in the top ten in its category among comprehensive colleges in America's Best Colleges.

The downside of Grove is that it is a morally and intellectually serious school, a throw back to the 50's and 60's, so you will have trouble selling it to the children of MTV.