SNAPPER MCGEE It’s official: U.S. students not as bright as you

Among fourth-graders, 67 percent had at least a basic understanding of the concept of history itself, though few could name any specific events. 13 percent showed no sense of events happening in the past at all, beyond a vague concept of everything happening “yesterday.” That was three percentage points higher than in 1994, the last time the test was given.

Some 29,600 students, 87 percent of them apparently high on drugs at the time, took the test in 2001. The randomly selected test-takers answered multiple-choice, short-answer and essay questions with only a slightly higher success rate than a control group of lab mice trying to play “Axel-F” on a small Casio keyboard during the exam. Students were alarmingly befuddled by questions like these for fourth-graders:

Pilgrims came to North American in the 1700’s fleeing what in Europe?
(a) the bubonic plague.
(b) religious persecution.
(c) Napoleon’s army.
(d) Godzilla.

Only 45 percent answered correctly with (b).

What was a major cause of the Civil War?
(a) East Coast rap calling out West Coast rap.
(b) People in the North and in the South disagreed over slavery.
(c) Montel Williams.
(d) The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.

Correct answer: (b); 57 percent answered correctly.

The answers to the multiple-choice questions, however, looked like the minutes from a meeting of MENSA when compared to the short-answer section of the test. Asked to write in their own answer to the question “Who led Germany during World War II?” 57 percent of the students wrote “Arnold Schwarzenegger.” The second and third most-frequent responses were no less alarming: “Tupac!” and “banana.”

Deanna Norvich, an education historian and NAEI board member, called the students’ answers “fuckin’ hilarious” and said the seniors’ scores were “about what you’d expect from a bunch of Taco Bell trainees.”

“Since the seniors are very close to voting age or already have reached it, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see more professional wrestlers elected to public office in the near future. I’d be frightened if I weren’t looking at the bright side: No way in hell someone younger than me is going to come and take my job in the next millennia. These kids couldn’t operate a salad shooter.”

She added: “Clearly, our high schools are failing to teach U.S. history well to these paste-eating morons. And by the time they’re seniors there’s no way you’re going to get them to stop fucking and doing blow long enough to learn about Benjamin Franklin. It’s just not happening.”

According to the National Assessment Governing Board, the independent group that develops the NAEI for the Education Department, only 17 percent of fourth-graders scored above the “vegetable” level. Of those, 11 percent scored at the “head injury” level and another 3 percent fell into the higher “slow country cousin” grouping. Alarmingly, only 2 percent scored in the “can handle plastic silverware” group, the highest level attained in the test this year.

To be sure, many questions were tough, especially those asked of older students. An example:

There were many significant factors that led American colonists to form the First Continental Congress in 1774. Among them were colonial frustrations with laws passed by the British Parliament. What is your name?

Thirty-nine percent got that one right.

The NAEI is given in different subjects periodically, though always to predictably pathetic results that make adults feel smart again after their bank account has been drained by a ten year-old hacker. The 2001 national history test was the first given since 1994, when it was designed to test the effects of crop dusting on the nation’s youth.

NAEI scores in geography are scheduled to be released this summer, with Vermont crossing its fingers that the state will be recognized for the first time ever on an NAEI exam.

the commune news has had it up to here with hip-waders that chafe the nipples. Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown is the long-dead Chicago Cubs Hall of Fame pitcher who haunts the commune offices from time to time and who definitely can’t be sucked up with a common vacuum cleaner.

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