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...and the universities should make it harder for these dumb bunnies to be admitted. Politicians are talking about sending MORE kids to college? How about making it harder to get in?
All they had to do was name one US senator...they didn't even have to name their own. One knew there are 100 senators but when asked how many each state had, apparently couldn't do the math. American University is in DC.
I know I'm going to see posts where the poster says, "They edited out everyone who got it right." That may be so but the idea that there are ANY students in college unable to name one US senator...
You might want to note that students at the university represent 150 countries, so it's quite possible that a good portion of those surveyed were not raised in the US and, therefore, have no home state senators to name. The university is well-regarded for its School of International Service, which draws graduate students from all over the world.
Frankly, it's disturbing to see that the vast majority of posters never considered that anyone raised outside the US might attend college here in the states, especially a school that caters to International Affairs students. And even if you aren't familiar with American University, it takes 15 seconds to perform a Google search and maybe another minute to scan the first few paragraphs of a Wikipedia article.
Last edited by randomparent; 03-28-2014 at 08:04 PM..
Yay, more hand wringing over selective measures of "intelligence." It really works when you say "college kids" because then the older generations can thumb their noses at those dumb young whippersnappers who have it easy today.
I've decided that anybody who can't tell me the derivative of e^x in less than two seconds isn't intelligent enough to be worthwhile of my time. See how it works both ways?
I took calculus back in 1969-1970 so I was wondering what the answer was.
Is it xe^(x-1) ?
Haha - it's just e^x.
My point though is that you can't feign outrage about college kids not knowing something when that wasn't part of the criteria they are evaluated on. If you think high schools should teach students who their senators are, then that's another issue altogether.
As far as I know, most US high school students take some sort of political science/civics course senior year, and I would expect politicians to come up at some point. As for the students at American University, if the kids were grads of US high schools, then their lack of knowledge is troublesome. If they were foreign students, not so much.
Last edited by randomparent; 03-28-2014 at 09:45 PM..
I wouldn't have known in high school. I suspect most people don't pay attention till it becomes personal.
It has been a long time but back in 9th grade we had a class called American History and Government, a requirement for HS graduation(most took it in 9th to get it out of the way), all this stuff was covered.
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