What Do College Students Know?

WHAT do college students know? It may be considered the worst kind of skepticism for one to intimate that these representatives of the coming generation, — coming so closely that they step on the heels of us older ones and imperiously demand that we either run or get out of the way of those who can run, — that these may not know it all. But there has been a growing feeling among many of my profession, whose duty and pleasure it is to guide the young idea through detailed mysteries of mazy subjects, that there are gaps, sometimes very large and ominous gaps, in their body of things known — gaps which suggest the possibility and need of further accretions. For a few of us, at least, this feeling has been transmuted into positive conviction.

An information test recently given to a good-sized representative college group, chosen at random from among the different classes and sexes, revealed such interesting facts regarding the content of their minds as to stimulate some concern on the part of their instructors, and, in the case of a few at least, to suggest a problem as well as insinuate a doubt — a most wholesome attitude, on the part of instructors, by the way. Here is what was discovered, in part.

Simple biological facts that are supposed to be in common knowledge and parlance are outside the mental realm of many of the college students, or are confused within it. Four per cent of them would be willing to ask a dairyman if his cows are Leghorns. And when we discover that six per cent do not know what an artichoke is, while six more assert it to be a fish, three a lizard, and one, no doubt thinking of the strangling powers (choke) of a boa constrictor, claims it as denoting a snake, we cannot but wonder in what world these sixteen per cent received their information — or lack of it. But we receive a real shock when we discover that a chameleon is voted a member of the bird, insect, and fish families by twenty-three per cent, four per cent, and four per cent of the group, respectively; while another thirteen per cent give up the problem of classification as a thing impossible; so that one can safely say that only a little over one half of the number really know that a chameleon is a reptile that changes its color but not its genus. Thirty per cent, do not know the location of the thyroid gland, and either refuse to detail their ignorance concretely, or place it indiscriminately in the shoulder, head, or abdomen, that handy receptacle for all physiological ads and y s. One daring soul even had the audacity to state that rubber is made of hides.

Geography does not make any better showing; in fact, even a lower grade of recognition is here exhibited. It need not affect the world’s happiness greatly if a certain third of our student body would take a liner for China if their destination were Tokio, for the name of this Oriental city does sound Chinesey, and it is a personal matter, anyway; and, besides, this method of instruction would be effective and according to sound pedagogical principles. But it would be a decided affront to some of our time-honored American institutions if they should learn that out of one hundred students who wish to attend Yale University, four would have to look in the atlas to know what part of the world they were bound for, while six would purchase railway fares for Ithaca, and thirty-six would proceed blithely on their way to Cambridge. But once arrived in New England, two of them would be forced to the discovery that Boston is not a city of Maine, and one would find, not without surprise, that Massachusetts, instead of Connecticut, claims the honor of harboring ‘the Hub.’ Such are the educational possibilities of travel. Our Tokio-bound friends would in t he same manner perhaps encounter a bona-fide Korean in the course of their Oriental travels, and henceforth be led to classify him as a biped of the genus homo rather than a quadruped of some mysterious creation.

History might also benefit from such a migration of college students. In the course of their wanderings through the sacred land of our colonial forbears, it is to be hoped that some proud citizen, or some less loquacious though equally proud statue, would inform some fourteen per cent of them that the battle of Lexington was fought, not in 1620, or in 1864, nay, not even in 1812, as they would ordinarily assert, but in 1775; for many a student now alive scarcely remembers that day and year. Very modern history, àla the newspaper, needs some stress also among the nineteen per cent who do not know that Bulgaria was an ally of Germany in the Big War.

Literature evidently has something to answer for in the way it has treated our students. It has jealously laid claim to Darwin as a literary master instead of a scientist in the minds of thirteen per cent, while another fifteen per cent would take from John Wesley his laurels in the field of religion and transfer them to literature. We ought not to blame too harshly that ten per cent who give Poe the credit, for writing The Scarlet Letter, or the four who attribute it to Kipling; for, after all, the title is suggestive of the temper of either rather than of a mild man like Hawthorne. Fifty-eight out of a hundred students do not read periodicals and newspapers enough to know Arthur Brisbane as a journalist, some forty-three preferring to classify him as a comic artist, actor, or athlete.

When college students do not recognize the names or places of production of commonly advertised commodities, such as shoes, automobiles, tobaccos, typewriters, movie actresses, and the like, it is of concern chiefly to the advertising manager whose business it is to get such information across; but as a matter of protection to the repute of the few great ones of our generation, why not periodically lead the college student through art galleries, chambers of state, and halls of fame, so that none of them would be unfamiliar, say, with the name and work of Rodin, rather than have fifty-eight per cent classify him as a painter, composer, or poet?

Why not diamonds born in the bosom of the oyster? Why not, indeed? It would be a far more poetic genesis than in the depths of a dirty dugout at Kimberley, at least, in the thought of one. And, after all, does one need to know where the pretties come from, in order to own them and enjoy them?

What do college students know? Which query we may counter with another— what should they know? We surely cannot expect any one student, let alone all, to have every possible item of information detailed and indexed in his frontal lobe for ready reference. We should not be perceptibly saddened if one of our most brilliant seniors should fail in one point, or even in ten points, in an exhaustive examination on the contents of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. We are constantly giving information tests in our daily work, and are gladly surprised, indeed, if even seventy to ninety per cent of the news notes of our particular fields remain after repeated reiteration as a part of the learner’s mental pabulum, even through the periodic ordeal of examination week.

All knowledge is rather relative, it is true; and what may be considered essential for one generation is apt to be eliminated by the next in favor of a totally new body of information. But we are disappointed and mystified when we discover that our group has no clear hold upon points of information which we feel should be common to all; we do not like the insinuation that this highclass body of real or prospective citizens is not, after all, representative of even the average well-informed mass of our citizenship, from which they come and with which they will have to do. These young folk have spent, on an average, over twelve years in public schools before coming to our halls, and in that time have managed to devour much public money, have worn many hours away, have exhausted the rich patience of administrators, and have made heavy draughts on instructional energy. When they enter college life, these same individuals are generally regarded as the cream of the public-school group, which has struggled through all molecular interferences and against the force of gravitation until it has risen to the top; it is useless to pursue the analogy further.

Anyway, we have good-naturedly taken the general mental content of our Freshmen for granted, have assumed that they have been taught, at least, to keep in touch with life and become acquainted with the free facts that float so familiarly on its surface, as well as with those that have been formally presented in classrooms. And it is always a shock for us to realize that quite a large percentage of those who enter and pursue college courses have learned neither the one nor the other. A chief difficulty just now is undoubtedly this: there is no body of material which is recognized as essential for everyone to know, and undoubtedly there was never a time when such a confused mass of information was available.

Students repeatedly excuse their deficiency in current knowledge by the statement: ‘Our college work keeps us so busy that we have no time to read the newspapers and magazines.’ Which naturally suggests a greater emphasis on the college responsibility of keeping the student interest in such phases of information thoroughly aroused. These older boys and girls are for the most part quite as human as the rest of us, and so manage to give attention enough to matters of primary interest. Students are being taught to answer quite glibly academic questions of a decidedly erudite character, while at the same time they are losing contact with the vital world about them. Seriously, we ought to know to what an extent this condition exists, and meet the issue sanely and efficiently.