1960

This month, instead of imparting news, I'm editorializing. I've long thought that Dartmouth ought to bring back Great Issues, and now I have evidence to make the case. U.S. News and World Report interviewed 3,000 Ivy Leaguers on their experiences and attitudes—and also on their knowledge of current affairs. The results were pretty dismal. Fifty percent of the supposed cream of American youth could not name their two home state U.S. Senators. Fifty-nine percent could not name four Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Forty-four percent did not know who the current Speaker of the Flouse is. Interestingly, a greater percentage knew who the Chairman of the Fed and the Prime Minister of Great Britain are. Ninety percent knew, thank heavens, that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. An equally great number knew that Rosa Parks sparked the civil rights movement by refusing to give up her bus seat.

Dartmouth students were not the worst performers on this test. Columbia students were. On the other hand, Dartmouth was consistently beaten badly by Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and narrowly by the other Ivy schools. Only 36 percent of Dartmouth students could name four Justices (vs. 55 percent for Yale, 24 percent for Columbia, 39 percent at Penn and Cornell). Only 43 percent of Dartmouth students could name their two Senators (vs. 59 percent at Harvard and Princeton, 38 percent at Columbia), and 29 percent couldn't name even one. Fifty-one percent of Dartmouth students picked Tom Foley as Speaker (vs. 67 percent at Yale, 43 percent at Columbia, 53 percent at Brown). Dartmouth students actually beat the field on Rosa Parks with 93 percent. Sixty-three percent of Dartmouth students identified Alan Greenspan as Fed chairman (vs.74 percent at Yale, 53 percent at Columbia).

On the two trickiest questions on the test 75 percent of all Ivy Leaguers (and 78 percent at Dartmouth) didn't know that Abraham Lincoln defined the U.S. as having a government "of the people, by the people and for the people," and only 41 percent knew that World War II was the last time Congress officially declared war. Overall, out of 13 questions, the average Ivy Leaguer answered 7.29 correctly. Yalies got 8.26 right, Harvards 7.78, Princetons 7.62, Brown 7.34, Penn 7.32, Cornell 7.26, Dartmouth 7.09, Columbia 5.97

The good news from U.S. News: Dartmouth students are the happiest of any Ivies with their school and Dartmouth ranks fourth in academic reputation, well behind HYP but ahead of the rest. By miles, Dartmouth students beat all others in believing that their professors are accessible to them.

I submit, we all learned something useful in Great Issues about how the world is put together. We had to read the newspaper, at least. GI got discontinued in the late sixties when Vietnam erased undergraduate political apathy. The evidence suggests that apathy is back. Comments gladly received.

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