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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?
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.
If you're going to give them a hard time about that, you probably shouldn't confuse the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. :)
Because this "test" is a bit of right-wing propaganda, which seeks to conflate conservative doctrine with actual facts about our government. (Or is there an answer to "Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government's centralized planning because:" or "International trade and specialization most often lead to which of the following?" hidden somewhere in the Constitution that I've missed?)
The "Intercollegiate Studies Institute" evolved out of William Bennett's Madison Center for Educational Affairs and Irving Kristol's Institute for Educational Affairs.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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!"
Some questions were obviously chosen because there are specific misconceptions regarding that issue. For example, the president has the ability to declare war, doesn't he? After all, our presidents have been sending troops all over the world for decades without congressional approval. But that is wrong. Only congress has that power. "Separation of church and state" being granted by the constitution is another common misconception.
Wrong answers to questions on central planning vs. free markets, however, are due to a devotion to a philosophy that is just wrong. I'm sure those elected officials were shocked that they got that one incorrect.
So yes, you would expect that no group could do worse than 25% when given 4 choices, but when the questions are chosen with misconceptions in mind, it becomes far more likely.
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.
Biden is saying that Article 1 defines the role of the vice president of the United States, and that that role is part of the Executive Branch. The VP gets to break ties in the Senate so that the Executive branch can check and balance the powers of Senate.
Keep in mind that Cheney is pushing the idea that the Vice President is NOT a part of the Executive (while the President is) only so he can avoid federal disclosure laws. Cheney wants to advance the power of the unitary executive by co-opting in part the power of the legislative branch of government. It's pretty scary stuff.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/