catching up

So it's been a few weeks since I've posted.  It seems I go in spurts - posting a lot, not posting.  Maybe eventually I'll settle into a better pattern.  I have a bunch of things I want and need to get up here soon.  We're in our third week of school, and we've sort of been easing into it.  The first three weeks of topics weren't that heavy anyway, so it's been a nice transition.  I realized I was probably scheduling too much stuff anyways, and  I've got to get us on a better schedule timewise.   Anyway.  I came across a fascinating and dreadful newspaper article and report today.  Tragic.  Newspaper article

American Civic Literacy website, with report

a couple exerpts -


"America's colleges and universities fail to increase knowledge about
America's history and institutions. There is a trivial difference
between college seniors and their freshmen counterparts regarding
knowledge of America's heritage. Seniors scored just 1.5 percent higher
on average than freshmen, and at many schools, seniors know less than
freshmen about America's history, government, foreign affairs, and
economy. Overall, college seniors failed the civic literacy exam, with
an average score of 53.2 percent, or F, on a traditional grading
scale."


we included in our survey six questions from the National
Assessment of Educational Progress, which is designed to test high
school seniors' knowledge of America's history and institutions.
Overall, college students scored even more poorly on these six
questions than they did on the remaining 54, which were created
specifically for this survey.


In summary, though a university education can cost upwards of
$200,000 and the average under-graduate leaves campus $19,300 in debt,
they are no better off than when they arrived in terms of acquiring
knowledge about key areas of America's constitutional and economic
systems.