A New York Times article published yesterday listed scores and results in the national geographic survey, administered to 4th, 8th and 12th graders across the United States. The article started out with promise, saying, “The good news is that students did not do all that poorly.”
That was the only good news and I wasn’t impressed.
Only one in four fourth graders could identify all seven continents. (Did anyone else fight this battle in his/her classroom this year? It drove me crazy.) No higher than 27 percent of any of the grades tested were rated proficient. If that’s not “all that poorly” then I don’t know what is. The article was written in a Q&A style and I found some of the comments made by David P. Driscoll, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board quite interesting. He put the blame on today’s children lacking curiousity for knowledge. He said they could memorize song lyrics, but couldn’t name the vice president and that was the fault of not working hard enough.
He sounds like a real winner.
I agree that students need to take responsibility in part, but they need to be provided with quality instruction in a quality environment in order to succeed. They also need to have sturctured home life that encourages that curiousity. They need to have books in the house. Maybe this Driscoll wasn’t all bad, but he certainly rubbed me the wrong way.
Equally concerning was that results had not shown significant improvement since the test was last administered in 2001. I thought no children were being left behind during this time period…
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/us/01questions.html?ref=education
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2 comments:
As a social studies teacher this past year, I certainly saw the dearth of basic geography knowledge in my classroom, particularly in the 7th grade where the state curriculum focuses on geography. I think testing is the direct result of the poor geography knowledge of many students. Because standardized tests focus on math and ELA, and do not test geography, the vast majority of elementary schools in Baltimore City ignore or barely teach geography. Some students do not get geography until high school. Until there is stronger incentive to teach geography, there will continue to be a woeful lack of geography knowledge among students in the public schools system.
I think you raise a really important point in your post. I think two years ago, I would not have been offended by this author's accusation that curiosity is to blame for students' lack of basic knowledge. I probably would not have agreed with him, but I don't think it would have annoyed me.
Having spent a year teaching students, though, I see it as irresponsible. How can we blame students for what they do not know? As Ejaz mentioned, our country, which now places such a heavy weight on testing, makes it easy for schools to ignore Geography when it is not included on tests.
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