What Tufts Knows

I'm not certain exactly where Tufts is located, but in this story by the Tufts Daily (warning, a little slow to load) a shortened version of the naturalization political knowledge test made famous by a Newsweek article that demonstrated how poorly American adults did was posed to the university students.  I blogged about the Newsweek article here.

How did 225 Tufts students do?  Not so bad by the light on the hill:

The results of the test, however, showed that Tufts students did in fact outscore Newsweek's "average American" — by 61 percent. The subjects who participated in the Daily's abridged survey outperformed Newsweek's group by exceptionally steep margins on certain questions, including "Who was president during World War I?" to which only 20 percent of Newsweek participants but 70 percent of Tufts participants responded correctly, "Woodrow Wilson," and the question "What is the economic system in the United States?" to which only 33 percent of Newsweek's participants but 85 percent of Tufts participants replied correctly, "capitalist or market economy."

On some items, though, Tufts students didn't fare so well.  This one is kinda embarrassing.  Here's the graf:

The average American did, however, stump Tufts when it came to the question, "Whom did the United States fight against during World War II?" Sixty percent of Newsweek's subjects but only 53 percent of Tufts students were able to name all three major axis powers correctly.

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?   Hell no!

The news article is good in that it spends time evaluating whether this kind of knowledge matters in general and specifically to Tufts students, many of whom are not from the U.S.  It's worth a read and I may very well use it in the Fall when I teach a freshman seminar on news and faux news and what people know.

Tufts Study: Young People ARE Knowledgeable

That's right, those wacky young people are not the disconnected, self-absorbed, knowledge-deprived, pop culture-driven types we always imagined, at least not according to a study reportedly conducted by a Tufts University class. The formal pdf version of the report is here.

I'm not exactly sure why the authors found it interesting to compare college and non-college youth. Sure, it controls for age, but 18-to-24 year olds who did and did not attend college? I would expect them to differ. A lot. And they do. Except when they don't.

Huh?

Well, college-attending young people do better on questions about public affairs (somewhat better, but not a hell of a lot better) but they score about the same on those all-important questions on who won American Idol or Dancing with the Stars. For example, while 65 percent of college youth could name at least one of their U.S. senators, only 51 percent of non-college youth could manage this. About 13 percent of college youth knew the name of the winner of American Idol. About 15 percent of non-college youth did. The numbers on pop culture questions are basically the same given the margin of error involved. The best we can say is that college youth are a bit more engaged and knowledgeable but they are about the same on keeping up with pop culture.

The study raises some interesting questions, more than it answers, but is definitely worth a read if you're interested in what people know or political knowledge.