Am I a fool to expect college students to know the answer to these five questions?

If I had a decent set of faculty colleagues who were sincerely interested in student learning, then I could have substantive discussions with them.  But, that is like saying that if my aunt had balls then she will be my uncle!

Thus, I am here blogging, confident that there are at least a few who care about these issues, even if we disagree on how the dots should be connected.

Every term, some time over the ten weeks, I typically ask students to respond to a few questions.  This time around, I did that on day one, with the following questions:

1. Name the capital of Afghanistan:
2. CH4 is the formula for the chemical known as:
3. The year that an atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima:
4. The number of justices on the US Supreme Court is:
5. Oregon has seven electoral college votes, while California has 55. The population of Oregon is approximately four million. Estimate California’s population based on the electoral college data alone.

After they provide their responses, and after discussing with the class the correct answers, I explain the rationale for the questions--about the importance of general education and liberal education.

I wish I could frankly talk with them, without using euphemisms, like what follows here.

Afghanistan has been on our radar, literally, since 2001.  This means that students at universities have grown up with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars contexts.  More than eleven years into the war, is it unreasonable to expect students to know that the capital of Afghanistan is Kabul?

Human progress on this planet has been via thinking about cause-effect relationships.  One of the most fascinating ways we do that is in science.  Without advancements in scientific understanding, we wouldn't be where we are today.  It is unreasonable to expect students to know, as an example of Science 101, that CH4 is methane, which is pretty much what natural gas is?

Europeans often complain that Americans are obsessed with World War II.  With an ever growing number of movies, books, television shows, documentaries, we simply refuse to let go of the topic that most Europeans would rather forget about.  That war ultimately ended with the US dropping nuclear bombs in Japan, making us the only country, to date, to use those weapons.  Is it unreasonable to expect students to know that the war ended in 1945?

The Supreme Court is our third branch of the government making sure that legislative and executive actions are consistent with the Constitution.  Sometimes, even the elections for the legislative and executive offices are transformed into a fight for the opportunity to appoint the next Supreme Court justice.  With hot issues like gay marriage, abortion, torture, and even the Presidential election, becoming Supreme Court decisions, is it unreasonable to expect students to know that there are nine justices?

We live in a representational democracy, not a direct democracy.  We elect members to the House of Representatives such that in states with more than one representative, a comparably equal number of people are given a voice via a representative.  However, the electoral college votes includes senators also, and each state has two irrespective of the population.  Thus, the first step in that fifth question is to understand that Oregon's four million are represented in the House by 7-2=5, while California has 55-2=53 representatives.  Is it unreasonable to expect students to know this?

Every term the results are the same: disastrous. So awful that I don't enter the data into any spreadsheet nor do I even retain the response sheets.  However, term after term, I continue with such questions--not always the same--despite the terribly disappointing outcomes because I believe I have a responsibility to remind students that the health and richness of the democracy depends on them, too.  I have no other choice given my intense desire for a higher quality of democracy.

But, this is not really my job.  By the time students complete high school, they ought to have known the correct answers to those five questions.  Yet, they don't.  Even more scary is that, often, many students don't know the answer to these questions even as they are ready to graduate with their BS diplomas.

How come we aren't panicking when 1973 is noted as the year that the US dropped an atom bomb in Hiroshima; when California's population is estimated at 220 million; when Pakistan is named as the capital of Afghanistan; when the US Supreme Court supposedly has only three justices; and when most can't identify CH4 as methane?

I am willing to bet that most educators in high schools, colleges, and universities, are aware of such problems and more.  But, there is a collective indifference to all these troubling signs. They choose to ignore and do nothing about it: why rock the boat as long as the bills continue to get paid at home!

If only I knew how to simply collect my paycheck and keep quiet.  If only!

At the high school reunion, thirty years after graduation