A recent survey conducted by the group Common Core showed that many American teenagers live in “stunning ignorance,” but these surveys severely misrepresent teen knowledge.
The survey was conducted by telephone and asked 1,200 17-year-olds to answer 33 “basic questions about history and literature.”
However the questions were taken from a 1986 federal government-administered test and questions were as specific as asking the subjects to name Ralph Ellison’s novel about a Southern-raised young man moving to Harlem. Considering that some students don’t even read “Invisible Man” in four years of English classes in high school, 33 questions are not inclusive enough of the wide variety of literature to which students are theoretically exposed.
Considering the test questions are also more than 20 years old, they should not be interpreted as an accurate reflection of contemporary teen knowledge.
While modern teens might not be able to fully decipher and appreciate the symbolic social commentary of George Orwell’s “1984,” they seem to have no trouble relating to the satire of Stephen Colbert, whose analysis is much more pertinent to current society.
The organization conducting the survey argued that focusing public school accountability on reading and math has been detrimental to areas such as history and literature, but that argument has undervalued the importance of reading and math in the everyday lives of Americans as functioning citizens.