Pages

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

We Don't Know Jack

One of my least favorite stories to have to read is the one where someone gives a civics quiz to the American public and then has to report that America failed miserably. You know the ones, where it turns out that half the people can't find their home state on a map, 30% think the Bill of Rights was written by a mind-reading chicken, 25% identify Abraham Lincoln as "perhaps a type of building material", etc.

Well, here's the latest one. This one, however, has a twist on the concept: a subset of the people polled was a group that had been elected to office at some point in their lives.

The general public scored 49% on the quiz.

The elected officials scored 44%.

Ten questions from the quiz are here, click that if you don't want some of the questions spoiled by the article). Without revealing question or answer, I missed Question 6 but got everything else correct. Americans in the audience, please, please PLEASE tell me you can get more than five right.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I managed to get all of them but number six. That one is tricky.

I do find it somewhat depressing how low those elected officials scored.