Mississippi Has Redeeming Qualities

The local paper has the usual bad news on their front page. In recent weeks we Mississippians have found out that we are FIRST in obesity and in hunger. Figure that, please.

However, this Sunday on the page entitled "Viewpoint" appeared an article written by Dr. Gary Scott, who serves as Senior Research Fellow in Civic Literacy at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.(See http://www.civicliteracy.org)

The headline screamed:

STUDENTS GET DEAL WHEN MISSISSIPPI BEATS YALE IN CLASSROOM

Whoa! I don't know many folks in the Northeast who'd have that opinion. But the article stated that in an "academic competition,2006, Mississippi's major state universities had defeated Yale."

Researchers tested some 14,000 students at random, half being seniors, the other half freshmen. In its second survey held, Miss State seniors ranked in their knowledge of civics 6th among surveyed schools, Ole Miss 10th. Although the seniors had taken few civic courses than the schools surveyed, these courses were of higher quality in the relevant subjects than Yale provided their students.

The article further stated that Yale, "despite its poor performance in teaching students about America and ranking 49th, imposes great costs on American taxpayers... The Mississippi schools, by contrast, impose relatively modest costs."

So to those folks who make fun of Southerners as not educated well enough to vote, never having read a decent newspaper, only view soap operas on television, I say, DO YOUR HOMEWORK before assuming that we're a bunch of rednecks.