This civics literacy test turned up in my local paper's opinion pages this morning, along with the following dismal commentary on its findings:
US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.Ordinary citizens did not fare much better, scoring just 49 percent correct on the 33 exam questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).
From the sponsor: "The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%."
I took the test and aced it: 100%. Test your knowledge at the first link above.
Update: Kevin Drum reaches a different conclusion, although not a very happy one: everyone is stupid. (He's addressing the "kids today don't know nuthin'" analysis these tests often prompt.)
Posted by Linkmeister at November 24, 2008 12:01 AM | TrackBackThe movie "Idiocracy" is closer than you think.
Posted by: Solonor at November 24, 2008 04:59 AMI missed two, but I'm not overly stressed about either. They weren't critical, like knowing the three branches of government!
Posted by: Solonor at November 24, 2008 05:09 AMI missed one. Maybe I should spend some time with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. With regard to our elected officials' scores....who could have guessed?
Posted by: Kate at November 24, 2008 06:36 AMTwo wrong here.
I lost my mental coin flip on the "wall of separation", picking Washington's Farewell instead of Jefferson. And, though I know that the libertarian/capitalist group that wrote the test wanted me to say that international trade increases productivity, after observing what's happened in the last decade or so I couldn't bring myself to choose the "right" answer.
It simply cannot be true that elected officials, professors, and the like score as badly as is suggested in the commentary. I noticed that the average score during the month of November is somewhere around 78%, so unless a whole bunch of brainiacs suddenly descended upon the test this month, the alleged overall outcome is, shall we say, suspect.
Posted by: N in Seattle at November 24, 2008 07:13 AM90% (I missed3; I can live with that).
Posted by: tomorrow at November 24, 2008 07:27 AMI missed five. On rereading most of the ones I missed were reading comprehension errors. I saw the words "income tax" and thought they said "interest rate," for example.
I'm going to say it's because my first ever pair of bifocals haven't been delivered yet. Yeah, bifocals, that's the ticket!
Posted by: Juli Thompson at November 24, 2008 07:51 AMI lucked out on the church/state separation; I read an online version of the passage in Jefferson's letters while trying to write a blog post a couple of years ago. Missing that wouldn't be a sin.
Juli, I'd blame the bifocals too; I remember being told I needed them. Suddenly I couldn't deny the aging process any longer.
Posted by: Linkmeister at November 24, 2008 08:11 AMI missed 3, nothing critical - the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the public good of flood control/national defense, and the taxes equal govt. spending question. I just wasn't thinking on that one, I should have gotten it.
Posted by: hedera at November 24, 2008 05:27 PMhedera, I almost overthought that one. I had to translate it into business terms: if revenue = expense, then . . .
Posted by: Linkmeister at November 24, 2008 07:38 PM