Melissa’s Soapbox

An education advocacy organization called Common Core polled 1,200 17-year-old high school students with a 30-question multiple-choice survey about history and literature.  While Common Core urges more liberal arts-oriented curriculum in public schools, the results are quite depressing.  According to Common Core, the results themselves speak for the need to broaden No Child Left Behind policies from accountability in only math and reading.

 Highlights include:

• Nearly a quarter of those surveyed could not identify Adolf Hitler; 10 percent think he was a munitions manufacturer
• Fewer than half can place the Civil War in the correct half-century
• Only 45 percent can identify Oedipus
• A third do not know that the Bill of Rights guarantees the freedom of speech and religion
• Forty-four percent think that The Scarlet Letter was either about a witch trial or a piece of correspondence