Shaping of the American Mind ignores contradictory findings, omits key information, wrongly argues causation, and confuses civic knowledge with conservative political values

Contact: Gregory J. Marchant, (765) 285-8500; gmarchant@bsu.edu

BOULDER, Colo. and TEMPE, Ariz. (March 17, 2010) -- A new review from the Think Tank Review Project finds that a recent report, which argues that college education fails to adequately transmit civic knowledge, confuses civic knowledge with conservative political values, resulting in "an ill-supported, anti-intellectual conclusion."

Gregory J. Marchant of Ball State University's review of The Shaping of the American Mind: The Diverging Influences of the College Degree & Civic Learning on American Beliefs was released today by the Think Tank Review Project.

Published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), Shaping uses a telephone survey of both civic knowledge and opinion questions. Based upon the results of the survey, the report concludes that civic knowledge "increases a person's regard for America's ideals and free institutions" and exerts a "broader and more diverse influence on the American mind" than does college. It further asserts that college harmfully influences opinion on polarizing social issues.

Marchant, a professor of educational psychology, finds that the ISI report repeatedly and improperly infers causation, selectively ignores findings that contradict its conclusions, omits key information about the survey, and seeks to promote a particular political position in the guise of social science. The report implicitly equates American values with the belief that the Bible and the free market are unerring.

By confusing civic knowledge with conservative political values, Marchant warns that the report "may, in fact, be destructive of the very ideals of education the authors ascribe to the Founding Fathers -- particularly informed democratic participation."

The Think Tank Review Project (http://thinktankreview.org), a collaborative project of the University of Colorado at Boulder's Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC) and the Arizona State University Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU), provides the public, policy makers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected think tank publications. The project is made possible by funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

Find Gregory Marchant's review on the web at:
http://epicpolicy.org/thinktank/review-shaping-American-mind

Find The Shaping of the American Mind: The Diverging Influences of the College Degree & Civic Learning on American Beliefs, written by T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr., Richard Brake, Gary Scott, Ken Dautrich, Terrence Jeffery, Patrick Ford and published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, on the web at:
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/

The Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU) at Arizona State University collaborate to produce policy briefs and think tank reviews. Our goal is to promote well-informed democratic deliberation about education policy by providing academic as well as non-academic audiences with useful information and high quality analyses.

Visit EPIC and EPRU at http://www.educationanalysis.org/

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