From high-school dropouts to college graduates to elected officials, Americans are “alarmingly uninformed” about the USA’s history, founding principals and economy ”” knowledge needed to participate wisely in civic life, says a report scheduled to be released Thursday.
The study, the third in a series by the non-profit Intercollegiate Studies Institute, finds that half of U.S. adults can name all three branches of government, and 54% know that the power to declare war belongs to Congress. Almost 40% incorrectly said that it belongs to the president.
Those who have held elected office lack civic knowledge; 43% do not know the Electoral College is a constitutionally mandated assembly that elects the president. One in five thinks it “trains those aspiring for higher office” or “was established to supervise the first televised presidential debates.”
“Without knowledge of your country’s history, key texts and institutions, you don’t have a frame of reference to judge the politics and policies of today,” says Richard Brake, head of the institute’s American Civic Literacy Program.
“From high-school dropouts to college graduates to elected officials, Americans are “alarmingly uninformed” about the USA’s history, founding principals and economy — knowledge needed to participate wisely in civic life….”
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Ignorant is a better descriptive word.
And, until the “birds” finally “came home to roost,”
“Ignorance is bliss.” was a better descriptive adage.
As a history and political science double major back in the day, that does not surprise me at all. I remember being hacked off that scholarship aid was based almost primarily on ACT/SAT scores more than anything, and there was not one single question on History or Political Science on either when I took them.
Math and Science is important, don’t get me wrong. However, I never thought that the ACT/SAT was a fair assessment of my ability to do college work in those fields and showed our culture’s utter indifference to the need learn those disciplines, as I never got less than an A in any course related to my majors, and I know I would have aced any ACT/SAT sections regarding history or poly-sci.
Upon further review, I took the full quiz on that website americancivicliterary.org that this article references, and I can see why people don’t do as well as one would expect, given the rather obvious choices that the 5 question sample suggests. Some of these are not nearly as “See Spot Run” questions as they appear from the article. I have a degree in Political Science, and even I missed a few due to the vague wording on some questions.
The questions, especially near the end, are really slanted to a very definite economic free market worldview. I think if you did not hold their particular economic worldview, then you would get a wrong answer, even if it could be correct depending on your economic theory. History/Civics and economics are related but different. I think the test would be more accurate by factoring out the theoritical economic questions that are fairly subjective.
For example, question 30: “Which of the following fiscal policy combinations would a government most likely follow to stimulate economic activity when the economy is in a severe recession?” The correct answer (according to the test) is “decreasing taxes but increasing spending.” I would take issue with that in actual governmental practice which usually increases spending and taxes (either immediately or down the road to pay for the deficit such policy would create). Either way, that’s a pretty debatable.
Likewise, question 33 is really debatable, given the actual scenario. The question being:
33) If taxes equal government spending, then:
A. government debt is zero
B. printing money no longer causes inflation
C. government is not helping anybody
D. tax per person equals government spending per person
E. tax loopholes and special-interest spending are absent
If you apply the Laffer curve, if the government is collecting no or very minimal taxes to the point of not being able to function properly, then government would not be helping anybody, as would be the case if taxes are not raised in sufficient amounts and a huge deficit causing massive inflation is at work. That question is contingent upon the monetary scenario.
For the most part, this is a pretty good test, but I would question some of the answers this website claims are correct.
I agree that #33 is not a well drafted question (I missed it). I also missed the one on abortion because I read it too quikly.
I got a 32 out of 33…I missed the last question.
Number 33 has other problems. Option D is the ‘right’ answer, but it’s only correct if you read ‘tax per person’ as ‘average tax per person’, etc. I read this as saying that the government spends and taxes the same amount on each person.
[i]Americans are “alarmingly uninformed” about the USA’s history, founding principals [/i]
Some Americans apparently also don’t know the difference between ‘principals’ and ‘principles.’ Or their spell checker doesn’t.
That was very interesting – I scored 31/33, missing only the questions about what FDR threatened to do, and the right guaranteed in the First Amendment (since, being too cocky, I thought the answer would be a ‘Right’ as in Bill of Rights).
From a good education and astute cultural awareness I could answer all the history questions right, but only by the grace of God (including y’all’s tip on #33!) did I answer every economics question correctly – most of those I was guessing at as I know almost no formal economics and am congenitally ignorant about managing the household finances too, unfortunately. I can only surmise that one soaks up the correct financial ‘orientation’ in a supposedly free-market economy from reading a lot about it. Taking the quiz was in itself a real education.
I think it would make a valuable post if Kendall put up the quiz itself.
I got 33/33. I can guarantee that if this quiz were given to most Poli Sci or History Majors they would not do very well. I know most of those answers IN SPITE of what I learned in School but rather what I learned “at the knee” of my father and grandfather.
I got 30/33, and also got #33 wrong, so the fact that I’m in good company helps assuage the pain of my imperfection. 🙂
Snarky comment below:
Of course American children are lacking in skills about civics, but then again, so are adults:
Joe Biden doesn’t know which Article in the Constitution defines the Executive Branch;
Barak Obama thinks there are 57 States;
Sarah Palin thinks Africa is a country;
and
52% of the electorate don’t know that ‘spreading the wealth’ is socialist economics.
If our leaders don’t know, how are are children supposed to know?
end snark
Jim Elliott
Florida
I wish we had a ‘delete my comment’ option, I’d delete my comment at #11. 🙂
As requested – Elf