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US Officials Flunk Test On Civic Knowledge
A test on civic knowledge given to elected officials proved that they are slightly less knowledgeable than the uninformed people who voted them into office. Elected officials scored a 44 percent while ordinary citizens managed an amazing 49 percent on the 33 questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. "It is disturbing enough that the general public failed ISI's civic literacy test, but when you consider the even more dismal scores of elected officials, you have to be concerned," said Josiah Bunting, chairman of the National Civic Literacy Board at ISI. The three branches of government aren't the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria?
If they had the text of this 'civic test' available.
... of the morons, by the morons, for the morons.
To make an accurate judgment, we really need to see the test, questions about economics for example can be largely opinion/philosophy based rather than factual. Though failing to correctly answer opponents in WWII is either blatant stupidity, or willful ignorance, a child raised by wolves could answer that 2 days after being 'rescued'.
Its also important to consider who might consider themselves elected officials. For example doesn't the US also elect local sheriffs?
George Bush getting elected twice.
No, but it does explain why he got the PATRIOT act and PATRIOT II acts passed by congress.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
the key caveat with this news item is that, when you RTFA, you find that they are culling the results from "self-identified elected officials." So, anyone could take the test and, for a laugh, identify themselves as an elected official.
In other words, it is not the case that the organizers of this test randomly selected a cross section of the populace, got complete demographic information about them (including occupation) then had them take the test.
See also self-selection and selection bias.
"Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article 1 of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that." - Joe Biden
Article 1 establishes the legislative branch not the executive branch.
So I took the test and scored 90.91% (30/33)
And I'm Canadian.
The 3 I missed...
I had no idea what Roosevelt threatened to do to the supreme court when they declared parts of the New Deal were unconstitutional. I didn't know what particular rights the first amendment gives. And I missed the one about the Scopes "Monkey Trial", which I'm not sure how I got wrong. I think I misread the correct answer as something to do with teaching evolution in private schools.
Of course, I got a few right that I made educated guesses on too, so it works out I guess. I had no trouble with the ones that were more 'general knowledge' but struggled with the real "Americana". Like the source of the phrase 'wall of separation' between church and state... I didn't actually know the answer was Thomas Jefferson's letters, but made it as an educated guess from the choices.
Overall, though I'm shocked that any elected official would score less than 80% on it... never mind less than 50%.
Forty percent of respondents, meanwhile, incorrectly believed that the US president has the power to declare war, while 54 percent correctly answered that that power rests with Congress.
But police actions, anti terrorism actions and a broadly, ill defined war on a noun like "terror" or "drugs" are all fair game.
Splitting hairs, they're different to "declaring war." In practice, they're all ways presidents have ensured they can declare quagmires, I mean wars, without actually needing to stop and ask congress.
It's kind of like asking a child, "Did your brother hit you?"
Crying, "Yes!"
Brother, "Ha! I only kicked you. You're wrong!"
Or perhaps that since the results were made public and reported on, smarter people, the people who read the news relatively currently, have actively looked for and taken the quiz. People who like to take little quizzes like this do it because scoring higher probably makes them feel a little better about themselves. Uninformed people probably don't seek out things that will, in all likelyhood, make them feel dumb.
For what it's worth, I took the test just now and got 100%, but I find a few things about it questionable: First, there are several questions that I'm not sure really fall under the definition civics. Second, several of the questions are of a theoretical rather than factual nature and I got the distinct impression that the test makers were pushing a specific (libertarian/conservative) ideological agenda. Maybe my impression was incorrect; I haven't had a chance to look up the group yet.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines civics as, "a social science dealing with the rights and duties of citizens." Most of the questions deal with the structure of our government and the history of that structure, so they can reasonably be said to fall within civics. But consider the following questions:
Number 13 is a question of philosophy (or, if you like, history mostly far preceding US history). Questions 25, 27, 30, and 31 are questions of economics. I suppose you could include economics as part of civics, because it's important to governance, but on that rationale you could start including all sorts of things, like statistics. Also, the answers to the questions are largely theoretical in nature. While there may be a consensus view amongst economists, they don't really admit clear empirical answers due to the complexity of disentangling the various influences in macroeconomics. On the topic of how best to stimulate economic activity, there are various different schools of thought that advocate different approaches and have enjoyed popularity at different times.
The other point was more a vague feeling I got that the questions were pushing an agenda. The survey picks out "religion" as one of the constitutional rights, rather than "freedom of religion". It asks for the attribution of the phrase "wall of separation" between church and state, and highlighting that this is not from the constitution (even though it is from one of the framers) is a favorite past-time of those who advocate a larger role for Christianity in government. Questions 27 and 31 praise free trade criticize centralized economies. And answering one of the questions "correctly" points out that federal disaster aid is not guarantied by the constitution (relevant to disagreements over the aftermath of hurricane Katrina). It's not really pronounced and may be just coincidence, but I'm curious if anyone else got this feeling. I'll have to look up ISI and see if I've guessed correctly. In any case, it occurred to me that you could use the press release to get the general public to take it and use it as a push poll, stating your opinions as the "correct answer" or selecting factual information in such a way as to give the appearance for support of your argument.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
Some of the questions initially appear esoteric, but then I realized the way the questions are designed, it's not so much a test of if you know the actual historical event, but if you can, based on your civic knowledge, reason out the correct answer.
Huh? The questions were remarkably straightforward. They were not trick questions. They were not cases of multiple 'right answers and one best answer'. They were not multivalued : a,b,c then d is a and b types. They did not generally have deliberately misleading questions or answers. There were a couple that were slightly tricky... like the last question might trip you up if you don't know the difference between a debt and deficit, but seriously... you SHOULD.
It's not really a fair test for the general public.
I'm curious to see what you think a fairer test would be?
If questions on the same topics were asked in a more straightforward manner, you would get higher scores.
How could they be more generally straightforward?
I don't think many people could get 100% on it without at least a college education.
I think that says more about the american education system than the test. But seriously, the fact that the general public didn't get 100% isn't really the issue... the issue is that elected officials on average, FAILED it.
Its multiple choice with ~4 answers per question. A big enough collection of monkeys doing it randomly should score an average of 25%.
Plus, like most simple multiple choice tests, at least 2 of the answers can be easily eliminated with basic reasoning as being off topic or otherwise clearly wrong, reducing most questions to a 50/50 shot even if you don't have strong knowledge of the topic. So getting 50% on this test should pretty much be a freebie. If you know even a little bit, you should score >50%. And the average should probably be up in the 70's, at least.
I don't think you need college to get 100%, a high school education should be sufficient. But I will agree that the people who didn't go to college include the people who didn't do well in high school, so going to college would definitely be a predictor for higher scores.
To be accurate, much of civics is history. Much of it has to do with understanding our political traditions and their historical roots.
And the brethren went away edified.
Deficit would have been 100% correct, no question
Actually, it would have still been wrong, a deficit is just a form of debt. Different from most debt, sure, but it's still a debt of a sort.
The question made a premise and then asked what amounts to a math question based on it. It's very common in SAT type tests to test your ability to solve problems.
The question was, in math form: IF taxes = government spending THEN? D. taxes/person = spending/person.
The question itself had nothing to do with debt or deficit or anything like that. A deficit (a type of debt) occurs when taxes/person are less than spending/person. In other words, when government spends more than it takes in via taxes, the government has a deficit, or debt.
All that said, you did a heck of a lot better than I did, I got an 81% and was pretty disappointed with myself for it. :/
I'm not exactly a history buff though, and that's where I made my mistakes. Oh well :P.
P.S.: The ruckus around the 2nd ammendment only happens when you try to change what the 2nd ammendment says. If you take it at face value (like we have for almost 200 years now) there's no confusion. If people don't like it they aught to push for a new ammendment to alter it (or "clarify" it, if you like), not try to make laws that infringe uppon it.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
With regards to:
13)Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas are some of the most well known philosophers that have defined much of modern "Western" thought. Although not part of civics specifically, knowledge of the general concepts that these individuals held is very important to how our society thinks and functions.
25, 27, and 31) These are basic economics questions. If you know what you are talking about, you either 1) know the correct answer or 2) are brilliant enough that you know what answer is expected.
30) Very basic economics. If you can't answer this correctly, you don't know how economics works.
Other than those, the question explicitly asks "what right or freedom is guarenteed..."; thus, "freedom of religion" instead of "religion" would be redundant (basic English comprehension here; come on, you can do better).
That's an interesting survey. I never really thought about it before, but you can clearly influence the results you want based on the questions you ask and the ways you ask them. I don't know what mod actually thought it was worth modding up.
I have a high school education and I only missed 3.
My wife has a college education and she missed 6.
Education isn't the entire defining factor. It's an interest in politics.
Please don't humanize the morons around me. It makes me very uncomfortable.
Wow, what a complete joke. I particularly like their question "with a twist" was actually a lie. The question "which of the 4 said 'I can see russia from my house' which was a question with no answer. I also love the insinuation that Mccain supporters supposedly knew more about what was going on.
It is a sad fact, but we all know how uninformed the average American is. Is it because of the media? Maybe in part. Does that mean the media has a left wing bias? Absolutely not. It would be easy to name dozens of stories negative for republicans that haven't been covered. Stories aren't covered most of the time because media is profit driven and they wouldn't raise viewership.
As for the claim 'Survey finds most Obama voters remembered negative coverage of McCain/Palin statements but struggled to correctly answer questions about coverage associated with Obama/Biden' - I can practically guarantee you that the inverse is true as well.
Oh, and I also love the claim that these were 12 of the most informed Obama voters. It's not like they had an agenda in picking them or anything. . .
Spooooon!!!!!
I took the quiz and got that too, especially that question about why free markets result in a better economy than planned economies. Any moron should be able to recognize the giant assumption in that question.
Help I'm a rock.
I'd be more interested in reading TFA if its title correctly spelled the word "American". I find it amusing that alleged professional journalists, who produce an article describing the alleged ignorance of Americans and American politicians, can't even manage to correctly spell the nationality of their subjects IN THE TITLE nor proofread it before it goes to press on an internationally available Web site.
Where's the credibility? Journalists are part of that same cross-section of (American) idiots.