A test for civic literacy

[silvercamaro]

Here's an interesting test to see what you know about the political and economic heritage of the U.S. You can take it on line and see your score.

http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/re ... /quiz.aspx

Sadly, the average American scored only 49 percent. Pathetically, elected officials averaged only 44 percent. Maybe that's why the nation is in a mess.

[jaybee]

78.79% Missed one speech Q that I should have known.

[Bob78164]

A couple of questions that I can understand not being general knowledge, but I suspect that most people here will exceed the November average of 77%. --Bob

[WheresFanny]

Here's an interesting test to see what you know about the political and economic heritage of the U.S. You can take it on line and see your score.

http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/re ... /quiz.aspx

Sadly, the average American scored only 49 percent. Pathetically, elected officials averaged only 44 percent. Maybe that's why the nation is in a mess.

Wow, 49% is pretty pathetic. I got 90.91% and I don't consider myself as knowing much about politics or government at all. (Even though I probably got lucky on at least a couple of them. Not total WAGs, but not 'oh, yeah, I know that!" answers, either.)

[TheCalvinator24]

93.94%

The 2 I missed I should not. One was historical. The other economic.

[elwoodblues]

87.88%

[sunflower]

I got bored 10 questions in and didn't finish!

[Bob Juch]

93.94%

[Bob78164]

100%. --Bob

[TheConfessor]

My niece sent me this recently. I missed one, #27. That question seemed to be based more on opinion than fact.

[trevor_macfee]

90.91 %. Two of the three I missed were economics questions - no surprise there!

[kroxquo]

100 %

[Kazoo65]

I took the quiz and got 29 out of 33 right.  That's 87%!  Three of the four I missed were about economics-not my favorite subject. I got a C in it.  It was a required course in order to graduate from high school, and unfortunately for me it was the last class of the day my senior year.  Boring!  My brother (who minored in economics) would do better on those questions. 

[Bob Juch]

My niece sent me this recently. I missed one, #27. That question seemed to be based more on opinion than fact.

I'll agree with that.

[etaoin22]

CRAP!


I missed the subject of the 1958 debates.

I guess they weren't televised. Oops, that's the 1858 debates.......
I thought 50-50 chance on that one, but I seem to have guessed right on the "Anti-Federalists", which has a completely different meaning here
I do like to know what's going on at the neighbours, however, and that's the only one marked wrong.

[ghostjmf]

I got 87.8-something; 2 I legitimately got wrong (the answers are points of fact I didn't get right), the other 2 are disputable economic opinions, although apparently not to the people who wrote the test

[ghostjmf]

Also, after an incomprehensible 1-day required course in economics that RichU required its accounting-related people to take a few years ago, one of the answers is dead dead wrong even to people who teach incomprehensible economics courses.

(About the only way you could get the "right" answer to a lot of the questions in the incomprehensible course is by using truth tables from the semester-long real-school course in logic apparently none of the people there had taken except me, but the

Spoiler

"assets - liabilities"

is one
of the few things I retained from it. The problem, in the course, was that whether you bought something before or after the fiscal year was over, but used it on the opposite side of the fiscal year, apparently determined whether it was an

Spoiler

asset or liability

.)

[earendel]

Here's an interesting test to see what you know about the political and economic heritage of the U.S. You can take it on line and see your score.

http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/re ... /quiz.aspx

Sadly, the average American scored only 49 percent. Pathetically, elected officials averaged only 44 percent. Maybe that's why the nation is in a mess.

93.94% for me. Cal Thomas had an op-ed piece about this in our local newspaper last week. I was interested in seeing the quiz; thanks for the link.

[wintergreen48]

Also, after an incomprehensible 1-day required course in economics that RichU required its accounting-related people to take a few years ago, one of the answers is dead dead wrong even to people who teach incomprehensible economics courses.

(About the only way you could get the "right" answer to a lot of the questions in the incomprehensible course is by using truth tables from the semester-long real-school course in logic apparently none of the people there had taken except me, but the

Spoiler

"assets - liabilities"

is one
of the few things I retained from it. The problem, in the course, was that whether you bought something before or after the fiscal year was over, but used it on the opposite side of the fiscal year, apparently determined whether it was an

Spoiler

asset or liability

.)

They must have mis-defined assets and liabilities in your course, if you think that assets minus liabilities is profit. 'Profit' is the difference between income and expenses/spending/costs: if it costs you ('expense') $1 to make something, and you sell it ('revenue') for $3, you have a profit of $2.

Assets and liabilities have nothing to do with profit and loss, except as a consequence of it. 'Assets' are the total of what you own, 'liabilities' are the total of what you owe, and 'assets' minus 'liabilities' gives you your net worth. The only relationship that 'assets' and 'liabilities' have to profit is that if you actually have profit, you will (probably) increase your total assets over time (by adding the profit to retained earnings) and/or decrease your liabilities over time (by paying off debt); if your operations do not show a profit (that is, if you revenues are less than your expenses/costs), then you will show a loss, and if you continue to show a loss, over time you will (probably) reduce your assets (liquidating the property you own in order to pay the cost of remaining in business) and/or increase your liabiliteis (borrowing more money in order to pay the cost of remaining in business).

[DadofTwins]

100%.

Better than I did on me soccer referee recert test this weekend.

[ghostjmf]

see wintergreen's economics post:

Where I got mislead by the quiz question is that RichU is supposedly a nonprofit institution. Which not only means they don't run 401K plans where they match what you put in (which considering how the economy just tanked is I guess just as well after all), & that they don't match your contributions to nonprofits that actually, like, feed & house & give medicine to people for freeeeeee (RichU educates people who pass their entrance criteria, but in most cases it ain't for free; they do supposedly do a needs-blind entrance exam, though, with lower costs & loans available to those who need them), but that they don't record profits & losses, only assets & liabilities. At least the individual schools & departments, in their everyday dealings, in many cases with each other, don't.

So I was still running on the "assets minus liabilities" thing, which I agree not the only thing going for a for-profit place. Which the US of A would like to be, but RichU is supposedly not.

[SportsFan68]

I got 87.88 also, and I agree about the disputed economics Qs. This is one of those deals where if you paid attention in class and read the textbook carefully, you would get the correct answer on the exam.

I've come to a new conclusion about economics (new to me, anyway): It's all voodoo economics. My Toastmasters club has a retired Harvard econ prof, a retired Podunk U econ prof, and a brilliant kid who I guess can't be all that brilliant as he supported Ron Paul for President, but anyway he is very well read on economics issues. They don't agree on anything! Not only do they disagree with each other, sometimes they disagree with themselves! In Table Topics, if somebody is brave enough to throw out an economics subject, each will give you two ways of looking at things, so at the end, you have six different and largely contradictory viewpoints. How can a regular person figure this stuff out?

[nitrah55]

90.91%

I still can't balance a checkbook.

[ne1410s]

93.94

Missed two on economics. Shocker.

[ghostjmf]

With economics, its not possible to tweak an existing system just a little, expect everybody else in the world to keep doing "business as usual", in whatever way is usual for them, & then measure the results on the tweekee nation or interest group or whatever.

That is exactly what you would do in a hard science; get it down to only one variable if only you could. With the social sciences its harder to actually, uh, do science, but sociologists, say, can measure rates of change, & reactions to social changes etc, without the entire world bank balance tanking or soaring as the result.

When you get questions like #25:
25) Free enterprise or capitalism exists insofar as:

or #27:

27) Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government’s centralized planning because:


You know the answers are just wishful thinking on the part of the obviously right-wing group running the quiz. Once you've figured out their stance, which is not hard, you know what answer to give them. Doesn't make it right, just gets you a higher score on their quiz.

I would have like this test a lot better without debatable points.


Questions where you could debate the adjectives, but shouldn't like
#28:
28) A progressive tax:

are OK because in that question "progressive" uses its strictly literal meaning, not one of looser adjectival meanings.