Calvin Scores Well on Civic Learning Study

September 27, 2006 == MEDIA ADVISORY

Calvin College ranks third in the country at adding to student understanding
of American history and essential institutions according to a recent survey
conducted on behalf of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute project.

The study was administered by the University of Connecticut's Department of
Public Policy. In it college freshmen and seniors at 50 colleges and
universities, including Calvin, were asked 60 multiple choice questions about
America's history and its government, about America and the world and about the
market economy.

Calvin College professor Doug Howard is chair of the school's history
department and says the improvement at Calvin can be credited to a "classic
liberal arts education."

He says: "We have a required course in world history at Calvin which
certainly puts American history into a global context. But our students also
take courses in political science, economics and many more. Even a course in
American literature or a sociology course on American diversity contributes to
a student understanding of America's history, its government and how this
country fits into the world."

The study showed schools where students took more courses in American history,
political science, and economics outperformed those schools where fewer courses
were completed. The study also showed that students who demonstrated greater
learning of America's history and institutions were more engaged in citizenship
activities such as voting, volunteer community service, and political
campaigns.

Calvin was among a group of 50 colleges and universities surveyed as part of
the ISI project. The goal was to see which schools showed improvement from
freshman to senior year. The average overall score for college seniors was
53.2 percent, just 1.5 percent higher than the average overall score for
freshmen, which was 51.7 percent. At almost one third of the schools freshmen
scored higher than the seniors.

The top three schools in the study were Rhodes (with a +11.6% difference
between seniors' scores and freshmen scores), Colorado State (+10.9%) and
Calvin (where the difference between seniors and freshmen was +9.5%).

Grove City College was fourth at +9.4% and the University of Colorado was
fifth at +8.9%. Spring Arbor, another Michigan school, was sixth at +8.3%.
 
An op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal notes that: "Among college
seniors, less than half--47.9%--correctly concluded that 'We hold these truths
to be self evident, that all men are created equal' was from the Declaration of
Independence. More than half did not know that the Bill of Rights prohibits the
governmental establishment of an official religion, and 55.4 percent could not
recognize Yorktown as the battle that brought the American Revolution to an end
(more than one quarter believing that it was the Civil War battle of Gettysburg
that had ended the Revolution)."

For a copy of the report and other survey findings, please visit
www.americancivicliteracy.org.
See the Wall Street Journal op-ed at
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/?id=110009000

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Received on Wed Sep 27 09:03:06 2006