Bonus Question: Who is that man with Betsy Ross and why is he blushing?
My Sunday column is about a telephone poll of Oklahoma high school students that seems to show they don't know some basic facts about American history and government.
Results of the survey commissioned by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs – especially the one where more than three-quarters of the students couldn't name the first president of the United States -- were a hot news item for a news cycle last week.
Educators say they don't believe the poll results, and I say that (although the state's official social studies tests should be bad enough to move us to action) the poll results smell off-base to me too.
Telephone polling is a wonderful tool. Newspapers, including the Tulsa World, use them a lot.
But they aren't for every purpose, and spot testing high school students on their civics knowledge may be one of the areas where they don't work.
I think there may be some of what I'll call the "Jaywalking Syndrome" going on. Jay Leno has a bit where he'll go down the street with a camera and ask seemingly obvious questions. People will give him inane, silly or stupid answers. Some of those people are inane, silly or stupid. Others are feigning stupidity because they know Jay doesn't broadcast people who look bright.
They'll trade their reputation for 15 seconds of fame.
Some of the kids in the telephone poll may well have been playing with the pollsters. Two percent, for example, said Michael Jackson wrote the Declaration of Independence.
On the other hand the most common answer to nine of the ten questions in the poll was "I don't know," which doesn't sound like a playful answer. That could indicate real ignorance or a teenager who wasn't exactly trying very hard.
After all, there wasn't anything on the line for the student (like a grade, for example).
If telephone polls may not be a good way to test for knowledge, I'm willing to test the results with an obviously unscientific and anecdotal method.
My column will include the ten poll questions and they're at the bottom of this blog.
Sit down with a teenager in your life and play pop quiz, then tell me what happens. You can post your results on this blog or email me.
Six correct answers counts as a pass (under the standards set by the federal government for immigrants taking the citizenship test, from which the questions were taken.)
Here are the questions:
1. What is the supreme law of the land? (The Constitution, correctly answered by 28 percent of the students in the poll.)
2. What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution? (The Bill of Rights; 26 percent)
3. What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress? (The Senate and the House; 27 percent)
4. How many justices are on the Supreme Court? (nine; 10 percent)
5. Who wrote the Declaration of Independence? (Thomas Jefferson; 14 percent)
6. What ocean is on the east coast of the United States? (Atlantic; 61 percent)
7. What are the two major political parties in the United States? (Democrat and Republican; 43 percent)
8. We elect U.S. senators for how many years? (six; 11 percent)
9. Who was the first president of the United States? (George Washington; 23 percent)
10. Who is in charge of the executive branch? (the president; 29 percent)
