Am I asking too much?

Consider the following brief quiz:

1. Who is on the ten dollar bill?

2. What is the first line of the Erie Canal Song?

3. What state is Vice President Biden from?

4. Complete the saying, “To the victor goes the ________.”

5. What is the length of one term for a United States senator?

Did you get them all right? Did you think the questions were difficult? In my estimation, these questions should be pretty easy. Maybe the Erie Canal Song is a little tougher, because that song is slowly slipping out of our national memory (as is the case with many of the songs of our heritage, but that’s another subject for another day).

Over the past few semesters, in the course of lecturing in my American History class at the local community college, I have asked these questions to my class. In each case, I was met with silence. Nobody knew the answers. Zero students in a class of about twenty-five. I wasn’t surprised that everybody didn’t know the answers. But I was dumbfounded that nobody knew.

It’s not that I think my students are stupid or incapable of learning. I honestly don’t think that’s the case. I try to take a little time to get to know my students, and all of them are capable of learning at a high level.

Why, then, do the students, a majority of whom are in their late teens or twenties, not know these things? As I recall—and I’m trying to be as honest as possible here—when I was a teenager, such facts were commonly known, or at least more commonly known. Vice President Mondale was from Minnesota. Vice President Bush was from Texas (that’s more obvious now since he and his son served as President). Ulysses S. Grant is on the fifty dollar bill, and Benjamin Franklin is on the one hundred.

The next question, naturally, is that if this is in fact a valid observation, then why is it that young people today don’t know these things? The answer to this question is no doubt the subject of many books and journal articles. In my view, there are some deep-seated problems not only in our educational system, but in our culture in general that contribute to this problem (a loaded statement, I know . . . perhaps I can address it in more detail sometime).

I notice this phenomenon not only in my teaching, but in many other areas of life. The problem rears its head in matters ranging from common knowledge, to historical facts, to bad grammar. For instance, I recently ran across two Facebook pages, established by American youths. One explained that what parents view as “back talk” is really just “kids explaining why their wrong” (how about “why THEY’RE wrong”). As for the other one, I don’t recall the specific subject, only that everyone would “want to be apart of this.” Hmmm. I could see myself being a part of something. I could see myself being apart from something. But how do I be “apart of” something?

It’s as if the movie “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” is coming to life . . . Teacher: “Who was Joan of Arc?” Ted: “Uh, Noah’s wife?” . . . Teacher: “It seems to me the only thing you’ve learned is that Caesar was a ‘salad dressing dude.’”

So here I am ranting. It just seems like many things that used to be common knowledge no longer are, that poor grammar and spelling are ruling the day, etc., etc. And it seems to me that the average fifteen, or eighteen, or twenty-two year old ought to know better.

Am I asking too much?

(Quiz answers: 1. Alexander Hamilton; 2. “I got a mule and her name is Sal, fifteen miles on the Erie Canal”; 3. Delaware; 4. spoils; 5. six years)