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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?
Other people have posted the link. It's really a biased test that is about 1/3 real civics (i.e. questions about how the government works). The rest is history, philosophy, economics, etc (with a conservative slant in economics - at least a blatantly obvious one).
Nevertheless it's still a depressing example of the state of America. I can understand how you'd miss a few. I managed to get 90%... but I can't imagine missing half of them. Self-identified or not, you'd still expect them to do at least a little *better*, not worse.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
is that this is related to the attack on 'elitism', which has turned into an attack on the elite. There are a lot of stupid people, and a lot of smart people, but people (typically neo-Republicans) conflate elitism (being a dick in the fashion of 'i'm better than you') to being elite (in general, suceeding at life, often because/with education).
This selects against people who suceed at life, or people who look like they have suceeded at life. Because 'they can't relate to me' is more important than understanding a number of economic theories, or the culture of an enemy nation.
My (slightly) partisan guess, but I wouldn't be suprised.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
I apologize for writing in all caps, here, but let me just say WHAT THE FUCK.
Each question has between 4 and 5 options, some questions, like 19, show elected officials at about 10%.
That means if they picked a random answer, they would be correct twice as often.
I'll conceed that it wasn't the easiest question there, and I can understand low scores, but.... seriously?
I got 20/33 (60%) - Fairly good for someone who has never been to America, has no intentions of going and learned everything relevant to the quiz from cartoons.
81.something%
The thing is, I'm Canadian and everything I know about U.S. civics comes from television and places like Slashdot.
Actually, whats embarassing is, I probably know more about the U.S. than I do about Canada in these areas. Sigh!
Haha, you think most Americans care about their own history. That's cute. You really have no idea how stupid people can be around here. They're fat, dumb, and happy thinking they know everything and actually knowing nothing.
Where I live, a rural area of Ohio, people are generally Republican because they are ignorant of the outside world and have knee-jerk emotional reactions to anything that contradicts their personal values or way of life (abortion, gay marrige, oil, Iraq, etc). People in larger urban areas are generally Democratic and have knee-jerk emotional reactions to the BS spewed by the media every day. (global warming, Iraq, etc).
To be fair, where they live affects their perception of the world. Being in rural areas you stay isolated, so everyone around you generally shares your values, religion, etc. There is usually no noticable pollution (other than the occasional manure smell :-), employment rates are higher because manufacturing companies like to locate in rural areas to keep labor costs down, etc. In cities, you have an overwhelming amount of pollution to people who aren't used to it (ie me), jobless rates are higher because cost of living keeps wages high which causes companies to outsource and automate more. You see more foriegners and foriegn ways, or generally just people and things with values different from your own.
The bottom line is, the majority of this country is full of morons who don't think things through. Even if they think they do, but are really just going on crap they heard somewhere and never bothered to scrutinize or verify it for themselves.
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Bush, Obama, William Jefferson (even while under indictment), Stevens, Clinton, etc.
The populace gave the Democrats in Congress a victory, kicking out lots of Republicans in this whole "change" mantra, yet it's shown that 43% of Obama voters didn't know the Democrats were in charge in the first place. Only 17% knew Obama won his first election by having his opponents removed from the ballot.
We are, in aggregate, dumb and completely uninformed. We will therefore get commensurate-quality representatives in government.
A lot of this stuff is not really civic knowledge, though. For example, while philosophy did play a role contributing to the thought processes that led to the founding of our government, it has little bearing on understanding the way governments actually work....
Also, #33 appears to have no correct answer. A. is wrong; the deficit is zero, but the debt may still be substantive. B. is wrong because printing money causes inflation if less money is taken out of circulation by being destroyed than is being printed, and has really nothing to do with money given to the government (which is still effectively in circulation). C. is wrong because the government may well be helping some groups while taking from others. On the average, it may be "true", but it still isn't actually true. D. is wrong for the same reasons. E. just has nothing to do with it.
They apparently consider D. to be "correct", which is just utter nonsense. Basically, the claim is that if the aggregate of all taxes and spending are equal, then the amount collected from each individual is the same as the amount spent for each individual. Clearly, this is not the case. A person on welfare clearly gets more money spent on them than a person not on welfare, etc. Now you could argue that the -average- per-person spending is the same as the -average- per-person income, but the "correct" answer did not say that. If they had said "per capita" instead of "per person", the answer would have been correct.
*scratches head*
Humorously, the other four questions I missed were the same four questions that politicians answered correctly more often than normal people. Apparently, I don't think like a politician. Good to know.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
So I'm a dumb Canuck and I scored 81.82%
I suppose this shows that the people in Canada pay way too much attention to basic issues in the USA
At the time that Article 1 was written, the Constitution specified that the Vice President was the person who got the second most Electoral College votes. That means that usually the Vice President was the President's chief rival, so when Article 1 was written, the Vice President was not viewed as the President's surrogate.
This was changed when Aaron Burr (who was nominated with the intention that he become Vice President) received the same number of Electoral College votes as Thomas Jefferson (nominated by the same party).
I think that in this last election if the original design was in place that Sarah Palin would be Vice President.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison