Education: Missing: The Common Core

U.S. colleges have made it almost a habit to berate the U.S. secondary school for the quality of student it sends them. This week, in his annual report, Dean William Warren of the Columbia University School of Law turned the tables on the colleges. "We are entitled," he wrote, "to expect that the college graduate be able to read argumentative or expository prose swiftly, comprehendingly. and retentively; that he be able to express himself in speech and writing grammatically, literately, and precisely; that he has learned the basic lesson of using a dictionary. But we have found that few of our entering students, however carefully selected, possess these skills to the extent needed for law study.

"What is scarcely less disturbing is that there is in this group no common core of knowledge that should be in the firm and quiet possession of every person who lays claim to a liberal education ... a knowledge of American history, of American Government, and of the structure and working of our economy." In one entering class only 49% had had any course in American political history above the freshman level; only 30% had had any sort of course in English history.

"These percentages are depressing to contemplate . . . The absence of a common core of knowledge ... is still further underlined by the fact that 20% of this class had had no college course in American Government and none in economics. A further 20% admitted to no college course in English composition. Any encouragement one might derive from the robust percentages of those who had received training in writing is shattered when one actually encounters in mass the written work of law students. Even the most tolerant of critics will concede that whatever be the arts of which the students are bachelors, writing is not one of them."