Calandria posted a link to MPRs discussion on civic literacy. The question posed is whether it’s important for citizens to demonstrate civic literacy prior to voting. If you think it is, you’ll be shocked at the failing civic literacy rates of college students. Here’s the test they took and their results.

On that note I was listening to a local radio station where studies were done on liberal professors politically indoctrinating their students, with a recent survey done to show that professors, whether liberal or conservative, have virtually no impact on the political views and ideology of their students. But whether they do or not I would be cautious still which college my child chose to attend. Ironically I encouraged our daughter to look at Sorbonne until Olivier reminded me that if I think schools in the US are becoming liberal then don’t bother considering Sorbonne. I still think highly of the French school system.

On the topic of the French school system, last year French education officials held talks at our local high school (one of many) to learn more about the school system here. As of last week the conservative Sarkozy announced that the French school curriculum will be following that of Finland. I don’t know anything about Finland’s curriculum but the idea is that they want to give the students more choice rather than continue the strict rigid system currently in place. While I like the idea of more choice I fear students will do a disservice to themselves by specialising too early like they do here.

Early this year Francoise signed up for American History AP. Two weeks later she dropped the course for a regular class. I was disappointed. She argued that it was a lot of busy work and that she wouldn’t be learning anything different from the regular class. If you’re a homeschooler or have been homeschooled then you’ll understand the mantra we have towards relying heavily on textbook learning. She wants to take Economics, American Government and Comparative Government next year and I’m hoping the required reading includes primary sources!

And talking about high school our local high school did a mock election a couple weeks ago on who they think should be the next President. Personally I wonder at their level of civic literacy in making an informed decision. Dorothy Sayers’ essay on “The Lost Tools of Learning” kept popping into my head all throughout this election. Notably this paragraph:

“For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects. We who were scandalized in 1940 when men were sent to fight armored tanks with rifles, are not scandalized when young men and women are sent into the world to fight massed propaganda with a smattering of “subjects”; and when whole classes and whole nations become hypnotized by the arts of the spell binder, we have the impudence to be astonished.”