'Best and brightest' dim on history

Tomorrow is President's Day, so it's an appropriate time to see who has a good handle on national history or government. If you think, however, the nation's college students have the most knowledge about the subjects, think again.

College freshmen earned an average grade of 'F' — or just 53.7 percent — when asked a series of questions about U.S. presidents and key historical events from their times in office. After four years of college, their knowledge didn't improve.

College seniors got just 55.4 percent on the 60-question quiz given to 14,000 students at 50 colleges and universities around the country as part of a study designed to test their knowledge of America's history, government, international relations and market economy.

"In this election, we are focusing on the youth vote, and it's great that more kids are coming out to vote. But we worry that it's become a kind of cult of personality," says Richard Brake, director of the Lehrman American Studies Center at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Wilmington, Del., which commissioned the civic learning study, conducted by researchers at the University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy...