making fun of oklahoma high schoolers
Sep. 19th, 2009 11:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitouthttp://www.digitaljournal.com/article/279410
This is slightly better coverage than some of the other articles, in that they actually supply the questions. What they _do not_ mention is that Strategic Vision is a Republican polling organization.
I'm not entirely certain what they're up to with this, but given that conservatives paid a conservative polling organization to get this outcome, I, for one, would be asking what's up. Like, did they repeat this on many small groups of Oklahoma high school students until they got the result they were looking for?
It bothers me that MSNBC political talk shows repeat this as kind of a "lighter side" story without mentioning who did the study, either who paid for it or who did the work. It feeds into a Conservative Southerners Are Stupid narrative, and it feels a little too much like we're being led right down a garden path. And often, that doesn't end well.
This is slightly better coverage than some of the other articles, in that they actually supply the questions. What they _do not_ mention is that Strategic Vision is a Republican polling organization.
I'm not entirely certain what they're up to with this, but given that conservatives paid a conservative polling organization to get this outcome, I, for one, would be asking what's up. Like, did they repeat this on many small groups of Oklahoma high school students until they got the result they were looking for?
It bothers me that MSNBC political talk shows repeat this as kind of a "lighter side" story without mentioning who did the study, either who paid for it or who did the work. It feeds into a Conservative Southerners Are Stupid narrative, and it feels a little too much like we're being led right down a garden path. And often, that doesn't end well.
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no subject
Date: 2009-09-19 07:54 pm (UTC)More info, including common incorrect answers
Date: 2009-09-19 08:05 pm (UTC)Re: More info, including common incorrect answers
Date: 2009-09-19 11:18 pm (UTC)This thing _reeks_. There is something seriously wrong with it.
Re: More info, including common incorrect answers
Date: 2009-09-20 12:07 am (UTC)"When a conservative think tank did the same thing in Arizona it turned out the methodology used to conduct the survey was severely flawed. They couldn't even confirm they spoke with high school students, and if they reached a household where no English was spoken (and it just so happened that almost 30 percent of the homes they called fell into this category) they marked down that none of he questions they asked were answered correctly no matter who answered the phone. I suspect the same thing happened in Oklahoma.
"BTW, a Phoenix TV station did a follow up and stopped 100 high school kids across the city randomly, and more than 97 percent of kids were able to answer all the questions correctly."
I haven't checked up on the Arizona study yet, but this sounds plausible, and I looked at a bit of the poster's comment history and zie didn't sound like a nut, as far as all that goes.
Re: More info, including common incorrect answers
Date: 2009-09-20 01:12 pm (UTC)I still don't understand _why_ they would do this. R. thinks they're trying to diss public education to pull support away from it.
Re: More info, including common incorrect answers
Date: 2009-09-20 02:59 pm (UTC)Re: More info, including common incorrect answers
Date: 2009-09-19 11:18 pm (UTC)Still haven't found the TV follow-up in Arizona, but
Date: 2009-09-20 06:41 pm (UTC)http://arizona.typepad.com/blog/2009/07/fools-gold-the-goldwater-institute-civics-test.html
Re: Still haven't found the TV follow-up in Arizona, but
Date: 2009-09-20 06:50 pm (UTC)"Keep in mind it's an open-answer format (not multiple choice). Nevertheless, for every single question, the results listed add up to 100% exactly--with no "Other" category listed as a catch-all for rarer responses. Most of the questions have only 3-6 different responses listed (besides "Don't Know"). This is strange in and of itself, and becomes more troubling when you look at some of the particular questions and sets of responses ..."
Re: Still haven't found the TV follow-up in Arizona, but
Date: 2009-09-20 09:22 pm (UTC)When I was in fifth grade (and believe me, to this day I will almost always do my best to give an accurate response to any question posed by anyone for any reason -- I'm that kind of person), I was so disgusted with my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Siscel, that I cooked up a little something-something for our unit on Columbus' discovery of America. We knew he'd ask something abysmally stupid: how did Columbus get to America? So we decided we'd all insist that he swam, and refuse to budge on that position no matter what he said.
That guy was such a bonehead he honestly thought that growing carrots in outer space (well, in space stations, hydroponically) would be a great idea because the vitamins in the carrots wouldn't be drawn down by gravity to the lower parts of the carrot. Whether or not that's even valid (pretty sure not, but hey, you never know), he further believed that would mean the carrots would have _more_ vitamins.
Yep. Totally worth telling him that Columbus swam and sticking to my guns on it. Because he was dumb enough to not even explore the idea that this was a conspiracy -- at least for the first five or so minutes.
Obviously he had it backward
Date: 2009-09-21 01:20 am (UTC)