Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Mike Farris:
We’ve been talking for the past few programs about universities’ failure to teach students American history, government, economics, and international relations.

ISI’s study finds that America’s most prestigious universities are the worst at increasing the students’ civic knowledge.

The improvement in academic scores was greater at the 25 lowest-ranking colleges than at the 25 highest-ranking colleges in the survey. But it should be remembered that no college in America got higher than a D-plus on the exam at the end, when they’re done with their senior year. At Cornell, Yale, Duke, and Princeton, the seniors actually scored lower than the freshmen.

This year’s freshman class at Patrick Henry College took the civic literacy exam, and their average scores were more than seven and a half percent higher than the average score of an Ivy League freshman. This is a testimony to the effective civics training of homeschooling parents, since the vast majority of PHC freshmen are homeschooled.

PHC’s graduating seniors took a portion of the civic literacy exam this past spring. We can’t make a direct comparison between the freshmen and senior scores, because these particular seniors didn’t take the test as freshmen. What we can see is that, on the portion of the test they did take, Patrick Henry seniors outscored every Ivy League school surveyed.

Because homeschooling parents care about America, our freshmen are the top ranked in the country.

I’m Mike Farris.