mark@cbosgd.UUCP (08/31/83)
Enclosed is a letter I intend to send to Ann Landers, reflecting the results of the State Capital survey. I didn't indicate my feelings on this in the original article, because I didn't want to bias the survey. If this offends anyone, I'm sorry, but it seems that most of the net agrees with me. This letter has been ruthlessly cut, and will probably be cut further if/when it ever appears in her column. There were many more fascinating comments from the respondents than have been quoted here. There were only two comments from people who strongly believe that knowledge of state capitals is important. If anyone wants to discuss this, or wants the raw numbers to run some statistical analyses on, please do all discussing in net.social. Dear Ann Landers: I could hardly believe the column from the teacher berating high school students for not knowing the capitals of the 50 states. (Only 10 percent could name 35 or more capitals.) She then proceeded to list a number of perfectly reasonable guesses (Philadelphia PA, Detroit MI, Baltimore MD, etc) as if these were incredibly stupid people. I don't know the capitals very well, and it has never caused me a problem. I thought it would be interesting to quiz some highly educated, successful people, to see how they did. I posted a note on Usenet (a computerized bulletin board populated mostly by highly educated people who work with computers) asking them to take the capital quiz and send me the results. I also asked them to tell me their educational level, major, and whether they were required to learn the capitals in school. I got back 105 responses, including 22 Ph.D.'s, 30 people with Masters degrees, 39 with Bachelors degrees, and 5 who never went to college. The overall average score was 30.05 out of 50 states. The Ph.D.'s averaged 31.73, the Masters 29.97, the Bachelors 29.15, and the High School graduates 23.80. All the college level people did roughly the same. Major didn't make any difference. Those who did learn the capitals in school averaged 31.34, those who didn't 28.42. All that hard work memorizing capitals was worth 3 states each! Many people did very well - about 25% got 45 or more capitals, 40% got at least 35. 9 people got all 50 right. Three people who grew up outside the USA got scores of 49, 45 and 30. One person who graduated Summa Cum Laude got 5 states, another with a high school GPA of 3.8, currently working on a Masters, got only his home state. 17 people expressed embarrassment from scoring so low. Some of the comments I got back speak for themselves: For my part, I am sick at heart about the emphasis in our society on what a person "knows". Knowing and remembering "facts" is of very little importance in the overall scheme of human activity (compared say, to ability to learn, analysis skills, ability to apply knowledge in one area to another, "comon sense", etc.). My kids (5 ages 10 to 13) are constantly bombarded with measures of merit based on "facts"; and its sick! ... Some "facts" are needed. Particularly those that allow a base of knowledge to be built. But, the facts themselves are useless, and the retention of just the facts a useless skill. The retention of useless "facts" are thus doubly useless. ... I think it is sick, and an indication of a sick society, that so much is made over knowledge of "facts" ... Henry Ford stated that he never cluttered his mind with what he could look up in a book. Albert Einstein once looked up his telephone number in the telephone book. I think the ability to remember all of the state capitals has about as much relevance to history and civics as memorizing the powers of two has to computer science and mathematics. When will people realize that facts, no matter how important, are simply the raw material from which an educated person gleans information and makes intelligent judgements and decisions. It's the process of sifting, analyzing, and discriminating that education should be imparting. After all, there are enough idiot savants who can do amazing tricks but have no understanding of exactly what they are doing. In conclusion, let's not use knowledge of 35 or more state capitals as a yardstick for the educational system. I agree that it needs overhauling badly. The schools need a LOT more money, to attract qualified teachers and improve conditions. (A little money will just disappear down a rathole.) The system also needs a change in philosophy. But what it does not need is a crop of graduates who can name all 50 capitals but can't read their diploma. Let's concentrate on things that matter. Skills. Facts that come into play in everyday life. Not meaningless trivia. Mark Horton, Ph.D. Columbus, Ohio