Pop Quiz: Are You an American Idiot?

93.94%

"Schoolhouse Rock" is the only reason that I still know all the words to the preamble of the Constitution, not to mention "Conjunction Junction" or "Verb! That's What's Happening!"

Here's a critique of the test (and an earlier critique of a similar one, and the entire "genre"), courtesy of Gary Langer of ABC via Mark Blumenthal at pollster.com:

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/zogby_knowledge_test_update.php

Finally, on the issue of testing "knowledge," ABC's Gary Langer critiques the annual survey on "American Civic Literacy" from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute that claims "the majority of Americans - including elected officials - failed a test of basic knowledge about American history and economics." See Langer's post for the specifics, but he makes a point that could also apply to the Zogby/Ziegler controversy:

The reality is that the ISI itself has failed a test of basic knowledge about the definition and measurement of just what knowledge is. I've blogged about this before - see it here - but the key point is that these folks are confusing knowledge (the ability to draw on information to make considered judgments) with recall (the ability to recite disassociated facts); and then doubling down by using an inappropriate method of measurement.

The links to Langer's full articles are:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2008/11/socrates-in-jeo.html

and

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2007/06/if-the-dunce-ca.html

Tommy Christopher

Tommy it's now official! You will never know what it’s like to be confident and competent. It’s way above your pay grade. Remember my earlier advice? Find a job in the food services industry. Look for a restaurant that “pools” tips, so you have a chance to make more than minimum wage.

I am impressed, Tommy, you DO know diddly about doohickey.

i matched your score!

no puny human here--i matched your score!

I scored 93.94%, and that's not bragging because most of the questions were very easy. I suspect that it was the Sarah Palin/Joe the Plumber types who brought the average way down.

Mr. Christopher,

Thanks for the heads up about the slant of the quiz. Had I not known, I would have gotten a couple wrong. I think there is much debate on some principles there, which it assumes as fact . . . questions 27 and 29 specifically.

For 27, the correct answer is E. none of the above. It is a trick question.

For 29, the correct answer is also E. it keeps the effing water out of my house asswipe!

93.94%, as I missed two questions.

I got 100%. They say the "average score during November has been 78%," so I guess some more "knowledgeable" people have been taking it since it made the news....

Oh, in case you're wondering, I'm of the benighted generation before Schoolhouse Rock (or even Sesame Street). In my day, they taught us this stuff *in* school, we didn't have to watch TV to learn it (;-). Well, some of it I didn't learn until college, but still.... (I also paid attention in school, mostly, because, well, that was the point of being there, wasn't it?) But the main reason I "know" all this stuff is just that I have a disgustingly thorough memory and powers of recall for minute details. To reiterate Mr. Langer's point, it's not really a "test of knowledge."

While the "slant" of the organization is obvious (and is the reason for all the questions on free-market economics), I don't detect a slant in the answers they consider "correct." It's an empirical fact that "Free markets *typically* [emphasis mine] secure more prosperity than centralized planning"; whether it's an inherent property of free markets is indeed open to debate, but *if* it is, then their correct answer (A) is at least the principal reason. B is false, E is at best not "typical" of planned economies (and not obviously correlated with their relative prosperity or lack thereof), C is at best marginally relevant to prosperity (or is the result of it rather than the cause), and D is not a property of free markets, it's a condition for them to exist.

As for 29, a levee you built (or paid for) yourself between just your house and the river would also keep the effing water out of your house (if you knew what you were doing or hired a contractor who did), but it wouldn't be a *public* good. A levee that someone builds to keep the effing water out of *everybody's* house (if they or their contractor knows what they're doing) is a public good, because everybody benefits without regard to what (if anything) they individually contributed to the cost.

Again, neither of these things (nor any of the others) is "free-market ideology," they're standard economics, taught in every elemetary economics course in every college in the non-Marxist world. (Which is pretty much the entire world anymore.) I got a C in that course, and I probably know more about these things than many members of Congress.

But again, the main reason I did well is my ridiculous memory, and also my skill at test-taking tactics like eliminating obviously wrong answers. Both of those factors make this far from a reliable test of knowledge, let alone understanding. But in fact the economics questions are *closer* to such a test than the random "Which document does this line come from?" and "What policy did this party support?" questions.

>I agree, the test is inadequate to its task, but I disagree
>about economics. I think that whole field is slanted.

Maybe it's slanted, maybe not. But enough of how the world works, for better or worse, follows that "slant" that it's an important field for a citizen of a democracy to know, if only to be able to detect the slant better. And I maintain that this test more reliably tests knowledge of that field than it does for U.S. history or government. (Of course that's a mighty low bar. A spitting contest is probably about as reliable as this test for U.S. history or government -- i.e., completely random.)

FrancisXavierPope, it would be so nice to be set upon a pius pedestal, you'll be knocked off soon, most probable by a McCain supporter.

As a high school graduate in 1954, I think that I am allowed to brag about a 93.94% score.