Evolve or Die: U.S. Civics Quiz.

[roseembolism]

In honor of Darwin's Birthday and Thanksgiving, test your knowledge of basic civics, with The U.S. Civics Quiz.



the good news is:

I did pretty well: I got an A.

You answered 32 out of 33 correctly — 96.97 %

Average score for this quiz during November: 78.1%
Average score: 78.1%

You can take the quiz as often as you like, however, your score will only count once toward the monthly average.

If you have any comments or questions about the quiz, please email americancivicliteracy@isi.org.

The bad news is the random sampling of American's knowledge of civics, as revealed in this report card:

Grade	Number Surveyed	Percent Surveyed
(90 to 100%)	21	0.8%
(80 to 89.9%)	66	2.6
(70 to 79.9%)	185	7.4
(60 to 69.9%)	445	17.8
(59.9% and below)	1,791	71.4
Total	2,508	100.0

I should not be in the top .8% of people surveyed.  More importantly, the failure rate is absolutely distressing.  Having 71.4% of the American public ignorant of basic civics is in my view, a dangerous trend, and one explanation for the disenfranchisement of so much of the American people with the political process.

Comments

[sandpanther.livejournal.com]

I'm embarrassed to say I only got 81%. Some of the history questions tripped me up.

The really scary thing about that 71% is that most member of Congress are in that group.

[palecur.livejournal.com]

The *really* scary thing is that folks elected to public office seem to do significantly worse than random citizens: http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/2008/additional_finding.html

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I suspect that most politicians that are elected on single-issue or or only a cople of issues don't feel any more need to know civics than their constituants.

Ultimately, politics have been dumbed down because the American people have asked for it to be.

[palecur.livejournal.com]

I missed the last question (#33) due to reading comprehension failure, but otherwise aced it. Interesting bunch of questions!

[baronlaw.livejournal.com]

I got a "b" :(

[racerxmachina.livejournal.com]

I got a B. Still, this is scarily better than most elected officials. D:

[bobmungovan.livejournal.com]

31 of 33. Missed the philospphers question and the last one.

[seawasp]

32 of 33. And I don't give a damn about politics, civics, or anything even vaguely related to them if it doesn't involve warp drives, magic spells, frickin' lasers, or Really Big explosions. So that's a pretty tragic showing by the other groups who theoretically OUGHT to care, since they're making such things their careers.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, if one picked out the right classic SF, one could get an education into a lot of the elements of civics, politics, history and the like. I recall picking up a couple tidbits of something historic from "Star Prince Charlie" for example.

[kazuhiko04.livejournal.com]

I failed (51.52%)... Guess I need to do some reading before I try to take a citizenship test :)

[yuusada.livejournal.com]

Well if they'd sprinkled in a few questions about the Magna Carta and the House of Commons...

[mithriltabby]

I got 32/33, but I’ve been following politics in detail for a few years now...

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

That's my excuse for doing so well; I listen to NPR a lot and have done a lot of reading about history and politics.