Hardball....... 23 Percent of Oklahoma High School

[rsmith6621]

.....Students answered correctly who the first President of the USA was...

.......I guess conservative states have poor education....guess teaching antiGAY/Pro Guns/ and GOD gets in the way of a real education.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. The last thing you need is for these kids to know their history

or their rights.

[mwb970]

2. 3% passed the citizenship test given to new immigrants.

For the immigrants, the first-time pass rate is 92%. Not in Oklahoma, though.

[BlooInBloo]

16. Nobody wants to be an American more than an immigrant...

And there's nobody I want on my team more, than somebody who wants it SO bad.

[madaboutharry]

3. Who did they think was the first President?

That is what I now want to know.

[DutchLiberal]

4. Probably Ronald Reagan...

[TheCowsCameHome]

9. You mean he wasn't?

Where have I been?

[Selatius]

13. Jesus Christ. He was the first president.

Did you know Jesus and Moses fought back an advancing legion of Roman soldiers with a pair of assault rifles...2000 years before assault rifles were invented?

[old guy]

18. Don't forget they were mounted on dinosaurs at the time.

[The Straight Story]

5. But I hear that public schools are better than home schooling....

:hide:

[Fla_Democrat]

22. thanks for the chuckle

:rofl: :yourock:

[Smarmie Doofus]

6. Not to mention no ( or weak) teachers' unions, low salaries, etc. etc. etc.

>>>>guess conservative states have poor education....guess teaching antiGAY/Pro Guns/ and GOD gets in the way of a real education.>>>

[tularetom]

7. A lot of the Oklahomans who knew the answer to that question

are Californians now.

[RoyGBiv]

8. Once again ...

This study was undertaken by Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, which is a right-wing think tank dedicated to eradicating public education in the state of Oklahoma.

The conclusions of this are suspect.

They are known for running stories that supposedly show that public education is a failure. They laud "for profit" higher education as the solution to the nation's problems at that level. They like "tax credits" or voucher systems.

Consider the messenger and ask to see the methodology used.

I know too many high school kids in Oklahoma. Either I have somehow managed only to know the smartest of the lot, or this "study" is bogus.

I'm not saying OK education doesn't have problems. It does, big ones. I also know one of the reasons it has problems is because of groups like this.

OnEdit: Carry on. I realize this is a losing battle. Clearly if it's in the mainstream media (and about a group of people we generally don't like anyway), it is above questioning.

[Okie4Obama]

20. I was educated at an Oklahoma public high school...

and egads, I am not a knuckle dragging, homophobic, religious fundamentalist! It's much easier and more fun to stereotype the entire state as ignorant fools than to question this study.

[RoyGBiv]

23. Indeed ...

I was educated in Oklahoma as well, in a public school of all things, and it was excellent.

My daughter, also Oklahoma educated, was a National Merit scholar and recruited by the likes of Stanford and Georgetown. She decided on OU nonetheless, for her own reasons.

But, ya know, it's the same old story. If the story is something that allows us to "Other" a group of people as different and inherently inferior to us, and if that group of people is associated with some other attribute that we tend to scorn, we're not going to critically evaluate it. That might force us to think.

And we don't want to think. We want to RAGE!

:toast:

[Obamanaut]

This was in the public schools. One wonders how the home school

and private school kids did.

Previous thread http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6568479&mesg_id=6568479

[nevergiveup]

10. I find this difficult to believe even in Oklahoma

Maybe folks in Oklahoma consider George Washington a liberal and therefore don't recognize him or maybe there is a clandestine George Washington Birther movement happening.

[Telly Savalas]

14. Yeah, I'd need to see the methodology of the study before I believed it.

Another thread on this mentioned that it was a a conservative think tank that sponsored the survey, by the way.

[KharmaTrain]

11. Well...At Least It Wasn't No Child Left Behind...

...this was the entire school district.

As others have said, an ignorant populace makes for easy manipulation for political purposes.

Bartcop calls it the Knuckledragger state for a reason.

[TxRider]

12. It's a suspect study by a GOP group to push vouchers.

Some people are so gullible.

[RoyGBiv]

15. But it's on CNN!

It must be true!

:sarcasm:

Seriously, just posting to say I'm glad someone else can see through the fog.

[ejpoeta]

17. I asked my 10 year old 5th grader who was the first president and she answered...

george washington. then she went on to describe how he was a general and then became the first president. I thought about videoing it and then posting it... i don't understand how people don't even know that... not like anyone is asking to name the first five... just the first one. geesh.

[Okie4Obama]

19. I'm sorry, I'm finding this harder and harder to believe.

Yes, I am an Okie, and yes, I believe that a good deal of our students here are ignorant of American history, but 77% of Oklahoma High School students do not know who George Washington was? Bull. My six year old knows who was the first president of the United States. I'd like to see the sample size of this test. This reminds me of Leno's jaywalking; let's find the most ignorant people and put them on TV.

Oklahoma does have piss poor public schools, but that has to do with a lack of funding. We pay our teachers even less money than Texas pays their teachers.

[liberalmuse]

21. You mean...people from a state...

that consistently votes Republican are...STUPID? That's shocking!

[RB TexLa]

24. What were the choices for the answers? I remember in school my class answered that 95% of us used

crack cocaine on a daily basis.