I don't believe it

A friend emails:

Students at many of the country's most prestigious colleges and universities are graduating with less knowledge of American history, government, and economics than they had as incoming freshmen, with Harvard University seniors scoring a "D+" average on a 60-question multiple-choice exam about civic literacy.

According to a report released yesterday by the Intercollegiate
Studies Institute, the average college senior at the 50 colleges and
universities polled did not earn a passing grade.

The quiz is here. I scored 100%. Take the quiz yourself; if incoming Harvard students are really scoring in the sub-70% range, I'd be shocked. Although it is heavy on economics, so I might be biased.

Comments

This explains why Universities are storehouses of knowledge.

Students leave knowing less than they did when they entered. The knowledge must have gone somewhere!

Posted by bristlecone | September 19, 2007 3:49 PM

This longtime AI reader scored 58/60. I will reiterate again Klug's principle of US cultural attitudes about examinations: Americans don't take tests very seriously; therefore, examination results are near worthless in measuring relative knowledge.

Posted by Klug | September 19, 2007 3:49 PM

Drat, 58/60. I don't feel too bad about missing questions on political philosophers (have a half-read book on my desk that would have answered that one) and money supply, though.

While the questions are all valid, it's fair to say that the world-view implied by assigning significance to those facts would be some flavor of right-libertarian or moderate conservative, I think.

Posted by Mike Earl | September 19, 2007 3:50 PM

I'm a British citizen sitting here in Edinburgh, listening to Diana Krall, enjoying a glass of wine - and I got 90% Perhaps I'd have got a better score if I'd been on the single malt!

Time to re-colonise?

Posted by David Farrer | September 19, 2007 4:07 PM

This dumb-a** Canadian got 54/90 as well. We learn about those weird Americans by osmosis.

Posted by imethisguy | September 19, 2007 4:09 PM

According to ISI’s report, a 5-year-old kindergartener would have scored about 20 percent on the American civic literacy exam simply by guessing. The average college freshman scored 50.4 percent. That means one can estimate that the average student’s score increased 30.4 points—or 2.3 points per year—in the 13 years from kindergarten through 12th grade. After three years of college, however, the average senior scored 54.2 percent, a gain of only 3.8 points, or about 1.3 points per year. The college annual rate of gain was only about half the pre-college annual rate gain.

The grasp of mathematical reasoning on display in that paragraph could also use a little college education.

Posted by JSinger | September 19, 2007 4:09 PM

You beat me by one, I missed question 58. In my defense, I've never studied economics (except by reading one book and a number of blogs). Maybe I was a LITTLE lucky, there were a couple of other questions on which I was not 100% sure, but apparently guessed right....but it does not seem like a terribly hard quiz.

Posted by Jens Fiederer | September 19, 2007 4:13 PM

This Canadian scored 80%. I'll bet very few Americans would score that high on an equivalent Canadian test.

Posted by David Simon | September 19, 2007 4:26 PM

I don't believe it either. When I completed the test, it gave the overall average score as 74.7% (since we're comparing, I got 95%). I find it hard to believe that Harvard kids are scoring lower than the general average for the test, unless all the smart folks here have jerked the average way up.

Posted by Just Another Greg | September 19, 2007 4:28 PM

I got a 57/60, but I should point out that

1) some questions have multiple correct answers (question 35, which I got "wrong" because the actual correct answer was ambiguous, and one of the other answers was also correct

2) though I got the right answers to all of the economics and budgetary questions, some of them are patently ambiguous. The one that was particularly ambiguous was the income equality question - the definition of "real" income is certainly debatable, and under many people's studies real income for the middle class and poor has stayed stagnent or decreasd since 1960 (not sure about since 1967). Likewise, depending on whether you consider off-budget social security a government outlay, the answer to the question may be military spending (which was my first instinct, until I remembered that Meg got all the questions right and noted the survey's "rah rah America and liberterians" feel to it) - and in any event, the answer (looking up afterwards) WAS military spending under *any* analysis until 1993.

The test has more flaws - those were the most memorable.

Posted by Justin | September 19, 2007 4:30 PM

Damn only 57/60! I'm terribly ashamed.

I saw the definite right-of-center skew to many questions, but really if one just eliminates the plainly wrong answers it's an easy quiz. Those Harvard kids must be pretty dense.

By the way, I did International Baccalaureate in high school instead of AP, and one of the supposed advantages of the program is its worldy curriculum. Instead of taking US History we took History of the Americas and spent a great deal of time learning about Latin America. I thought for sure I would spank the exam, until I saw that all the questions wanted me to compare and contrast the US with Latin America and Canada. We hadn't learned a damn thing about Canada the whole year! It wasn't mentioned once, not in the textbook or lectures.

So my Canadian friends, I'm sorry to say that Americans really will go out of their way to not learn anything about your lovely country.

Posted by Christina | September 19, 2007 4:42 PM

I blew 58 and 60. I can certainly buy that freshmen wouldn't understand some of the economic stuff on the survey.

Of course, incentives also matter. Tell kids that their grade depends on right answers and I think you'd see better scores.

Posted by Chris Lawrence | September 19, 2007 4:44 PM

I'm pretty sure there's a selection bias in that only people who care about these things *and* expect they'll do well will follow links like these.

Whereas questions about the order of american civil war battles is not the kind of thing most students care about (I don't either, but I'm Canadian, and still got 85%).

Posted by Dave | September 19, 2007 4:45 PM

I'm pretty sure there's a selection bias in that only people who care about these things *and* expect they'll do well will follow links like these.

Whereas questions about the order of american civil war battles is not the kind of thing most students care about (I don't either, but I'm Canadian, and still got 85%).

Posted by Dave | September 19, 2007 4:46 PM

You answered 58 out of 60 correctly — 96.67 %
Average score for this quiz during September: 74.8%
Average score since September 18, 2007: 74.8%

Answers to Your Missed Questions:
Question #36 - D. The authority of a legitimate sovereign.
Question #58 - B. An increase in the volume of commercial bank loans.

I think I did pretty well, considering my liberalitude :) I did have to guess on SEVERAL questions though. I must have gotten pretty lucky.

I blew #36 because I couldn't believe that the bar for a "just war" was that low. Who defines what a "legitimate" sovereign is?

#58 was about the Federal Reserve buying bonds and I have to admit I'm no economist. I see that as pretty much of a good thing though.

Posted by liberalrob | September 19, 2007 4:48 PM

I feel like a fool for only getting 56/60.

One of them I knew the answer they wanted, but I disagree with the principle of giving a long-dead Christian theologen ownership of the entirety of "Just War Theory".

On #54 I read "Keynes" but thought "Friedman". Probably because I went there from a link on this site.

I looked at the questions afterwards, trying to remember when I learned the answers to each. Three would have been anachronistic if asked during college. Of the other 57, I probably would have gotten 47 as freshman and 52 as a senior.

I looked at their results tables. I think they are indicative of the effort students will put forth on tests that do not affect their grades nor earn them money.

Posted by Njorl | September 19, 2007 4:49 PM

alas, earwax... I was happy that Aquinas was mentioned, because philosophy courses often focus only on socratics, and Plato... but I didn't do as well on the economist parts, because I never took that...

Either way I haven't used much of that knowledge in 20 years... While you would think elite incoming freshmen, or college students would have a lot of that fresh in their minds, and in the MODE of thinking about it... a number of questions were too easy because they had only one answer that would fit, while others were obscure by having answers that were more open to opinion...

Posted by D | September 19, 2007 4:51 PM

'I blew #36 because I couldn't believe that the bar for a "just war" was that low. Who defines what a "legitimate" sovereign is?'

The Catholic Church.

Which is why I got it wrong on purpose. The question should have been phrased, "According to Aquinas' just war theory...". One must protest these things where one can.

Posted by Njorl | September 19, 2007 4:55 PM

You're smarter than I am - 57/60. Missed ambassadors to Congress, the effect of the Feb buying bonds, and Social Security being the largest expense. I'm not terribly unproud of myself.

As for the rest of the country, I sincerely believe that our education system teaches children to learn but not to know. Let's face it - we're all "know-it-alls" on this board and you, like me, probably took the test without cheating. A 16 year-old with none of this knowledge but average Google skills could have done just as well if in more time. Comprehension would be lacking, however.

Posted by Mike D | September 19, 2007 4:56 PM

I missed only the question about a "just war".

Guessed on several, the one about Edmund Burke (though the other answers were clearly wrong, so it wasn't a complete guess), the one about the government's most expensive program over the last 40 years (had to be either defense or SS).

The most complete guess I made was the one on Plato and philosopher kings. Read it twenty-three years ago, don't remember much about it.

Posted by Yancey Ward | September 19, 2007 4:59 PM

I would be surprised if incoming Harvard students did get 70% correct, on average, and even more surprised if Harvard graduates did.

Posted by Yancey Ward | September 19, 2007 5:01 PM

re 'Just war':

Note that that's a necessary condition, not a sufficient one; by the theory, it's perfectly possible for a sovereign to prosecute an unjust war, but a just war requires backing of a legitimate government (otherwise it's mere vigilanteeism (is that a word?)).

Posted by Mike Earl | September 19, 2007 5:04 PM

Those damn commercial bank loans . . .

Posted by Felipe | September 19, 2007 5:04 PM

I got 57/60. Only missed economics questions although my answers to a couple of the political philosophy questions were lucky guesses.I must say I am always skeptical about these kind of surveys -- you know, the ones that purport to show that, say, 50% of high school seniors do not know in what century the Civil War was fought or think it came before the Revolution. I always kind of suspected that the kids were blowing off the questioner. Does anyone have any insight into how reliable these kinds of surveys are?

Posted by RPL | September 19, 2007 5:07 PM

Mike Earl:

Yeah, check out the board members.

http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/about_board.html

Victor Davis Hanson, people from AEI, Hoover Institute, WSJ editorial board members.

ISI is not a trade organization by civics teachers, its a think tank that believes in a classical Western liberal arts education.

Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but be aware of the ideological underpinnings

Also those web quizzes that tell you what type of lolcat you are, they are secretly run by Stalinists.

Posted by Space Monkey | September 19, 2007 5:11 PM

Njorl,

I would think that kids who go to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton would have so much ego dependent upon grades of any sort that it would be sufficient motivation to get them to take it at least seriously enough to get a C.

I'm a terrible student, and yet I was motivated enough to get a 95%, just because I wouldn't want this stupid quiz haunting me.

"Smart" kids don't like being proven otherwise.

Posted by Christina | September 19, 2007 5:17 PM

A couple of people seem to have misunderstood the meaning of legitimate sovereign. Try Googling it. I don't view the quiz or anyone's results, as a question of brainpower. That's not the issue here. Civic literacy is, and some are generally better informed than others. This is not news. At the same time. most of the questions address basic themes that these college students had only recently and repeatedly encountered time in secondary schools or college, while most of those here probably have been out of school for many years.

Check out the highlighted major points addressed in the report to which this quiz is attached instead of ignoring it as irrelevant - it isn't. Look at the chart of schools with the greatest increases in correct answers after 4 years at a school, least expensive schools with highest correct answers or greatest increase in correct answers. Lots of interesting material available for those who seek it.

Posted by Internet Ronin | September 19, 2007 5:17 PM

"Also those web quizzes that tell you what type of lolcat you are, they are secretly run by Stalinists."

ROFL

Posted by liberalrob | September 19, 2007 5:17 PM

93%, not bad for a physicist who only took econ 101 and a single poli-sci course in college. The only answer I wish I had back was Washington's "entanglements." I knew he had a similar warning, but confused it with the admonishment against political parties.

Posted by Matt B | September 19, 2007 5:22 PM

Well, as someone who's grading his first undergrad papers ever... I feel your pain. But, look, I think you need to first shift your thinking from "Harvard kids are probably the brightest". It's complicated, but as a general rule, that isn't worth much.

Posted by Freddie | September 19, 2007 5:23 PM

If this quiz were given in the social sciences department of an Ivy League university, say, Harvard, the 70% mean would be a B. The top 25-33% would get As, maybe 10% would get Cs and Ds (and maybe a token F), and the rest would get Bs. It's not fair to the students if the test is too hard, right?

Posted by Kwyjjibo | September 19, 2007 5:29 PM

I got 60/60 as well (some by process of elimination), but I am not surprised at all by the finding that Harvard students (or students anywhere, for that matter) scored poorly. The median student anywhere is incurious, and got into college by jumping through well-defined hoops. Those hoops did not include having a solid understanding of civics.

Posted by Eli | September 19, 2007 5:31 PM

Harvard grad, only 47/60. Too much math & computers, I guess. FWIW, most wrong answers my 2nd choice would have been right, though of course I was probably guessing on some that I did get right.

Posted by fb | September 19, 2007 5:45 PM

Liberalrob:

I got the same questions wrong and I'm not much of a liberal. Great minds think alike?

Posted by Klug | September 19, 2007 5:49 PM

39/60. The history and general constitutional stuff I generally got right. Most of the questions I missed involved either dates that I was aware of, but haven't thought about in a very long time; or the philosophy stuff, which (a) is uninspiring to me and (b) generally isn't taught in engineering school unless you go looking very hard for it.

I also guarantee that the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, which I successfully completed six years ago, would handily wipe the smile off any liberal arts major's face. Fear me -- the knowledge I have helps to keep your electrical system maintained and expanded, preventing you from having to experience Plato with heavy blankets and candlelight (which is not so romantic as it sounds).

Posted by anony-mouse | September 19, 2007 5:55 PM

anony-, with this: "Fear me -- the knowledge I have helps to keep your electrical system maintained and expanded"- I'll give you 21 bonus points if you can begin thinking about distributed electricity generation~

That Quiz's, at the Time I took it, 74.7 mean, should illuminate, in stark relief, why constructive political discourse is shading toward non-existant.

Posted by Mark E Hoffer | September 19, 2007 6:37 PM

Christina: I don't believe the quiz was actually administered during class time, and definitely each student was informed of his own grade.
I only got 55 of 60. Economics is not my strong point. Also, I think the exact definition of balance of power is a little ambiguous.

Posted by James Kabala | September 19, 2007 6:54 PM

Oops: I meant "definitely each student was NOT informed of his own grade."

Posted by James Kabala | September 19, 2007 6:54 PM

Answered 57 out of 60 correctly — 95.00 %

Missed #36, #48, and #58. I'm a biochemist, and I've never taken an economics class in my life, so I don't mind being ignorant of some (probably) pretty basic economic factoids.

I would be suspicious of these results also, if I thought that American History was a requirement for either high school or university students. I don't have trouble believing that graduating seniors at Harvard are what I would consider ignorant of history. I bet they could kick my ass in Modern Ethnic Literature, though. And they can use "othering" as a verb.

Posted by Seb | September 19, 2007 7:03 PM

Yes. The exact definition of "balance of power" was pretty questionable. Can you guess the one question I got wrong . --sw

Posted by Scott Wood | September 19, 2007 7:05 PM

60 out of 60. But I guessed a little bit on some of the political philosophy. Correlatively, I think only an econ major could reasonably be expected to get all the econ questions right.

But that's pretty good, Megan. What were your SAT scores?

Posted by y81 | September 19, 2007 7:20 PM

Bringing up the rear, 35/60.

But, I'll write the software that runs this blog ;-)

Posted by Sigh | September 19, 2007 7:28 PM

I got 98%. The funny thing is, I got right all the ones I guessed blindly on or used elimination on, but missed the one question just by misreading "Johnson" as "Jackson" and flubbing the Reconstruction question. A hazily remembered AP US history will get you a long way on this test. Bless you, Mrs. Lawson!

I can totally see how a college senior would score lower on this than a college freshman, since it is based so much in AP US history, and a high school senior could quite easily avoid taking a big US history survey course in college. Also, as some people mention, there are a lot of "conservative" questions.

Posted by Amy P | September 19, 2007 8:11 PM

59/60, and I knew they wanted Marbury vs Madison on the one I missed; I just picked the Constitution because it was right.

I dislike multiple choice (a prof of mine once called it "multiple guess") because there are always so many of them in which the test-wise test-taker can:
(a) gain information from the answers, or
(b) figure out the "right" answer by metaknowledge about the test-writers.
I feel like almost every multiple choice test is partly a test of its supposed subject, and partly a test of one's multiple-choice-test-taking skill.
It's a lazy test format.

Posted by Leonard | September 19, 2007 8:44 PM

What were the "conservative questions"?

Posted by Yancey Ward | September 19, 2007 9:45 PM

56 of 60. I'm surprised I got all the philosophy ones right. The ones I feel OK about getting wrong - the "just war" question and 2 economic ones (58 and 60).

The one I feel stupid about getting wrong was "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." I thought it was from the start of the document, and I knew the D of I starts off with "When in the course of human events", so I said the Constitution. (Which I still can't remember - don't tell me, I'll look it up.)

Posted by Devin McCullen | September 19, 2007 10:31 PM

Jamestown Colony my foot! What does placing the date about some English malcontents in a malaria-infested swamp in the estatuary of some dumb river in Virginia have to do with American Civics?

I suppose I guessed right about the moral relativism answer as it did not make sense to me, and I guessed lucky about buying bonds releasing more money to bank loans -- reminds me of a do-it-yourself mortage lien within the family where I had to parse the difference between mortgager and mortgagee.

Posted by Paul Milenkovic | September 19, 2007 10:41 PM

I think I owe most of my correct answers to Booknotes. Thank you Brian Lamb for making me smarter than most Ivy League grads.

Posted by Paul Milenkovic | September 19, 2007 10:43 PM

55/60

Note to self: brush up on War of 1812, Andrew Johnson, Marbury v. Madison, the Monroe Doctrine, and Just War theory.

Actually, I think it's quite understandable that college graduates would do worse than incoming freshman on this test. I had to take American History during both my junior and senior years of high school, but not at all in college.

Posted by Rob Leder | September 19, 2007 10:48 PM

I got 59/98% -- wasn't paying close enough attention and blew #58 -- but the test definitely wasn't perfect; for instance, I knew it wanted "Marbury vs. Madison" for the judicial review question, so I put that down, but the correct answer was (despite what they teach in high school social studies) the constitution.

Posted by David Nieporent | September 20, 2007 2:30 AM

The quiz is biased.

Posted by noen | September 20, 2007 2:48 AM

It's pretty interesting that the comments here seem to show that basically, the quiz is just biased against science grads.

FWIW, liberal Harvard grad, 57 out of 60. Missed the bond effect, called Locke on divine right rather than Burke who I never read (anti-conservative bias! See?), and the authority of a legit sovereign.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 20, 2007 4:20 AM

59/60, missed 58 because my hand twitched. A real shame for someone who majored in economics at Columbia a long time ago. Got a lot of questions by process of elimination. Does getting the right answer by knowing the wrong answers qualify as knowledge?

Anyway, it is not what you know, it is what you feel. It is not your actions, it is your intentions.

Posted by jimbo | September 20, 2007 6:01 AM

This explains why Universities are storehouses of knowledge. Students leave knowing less than they did when they entered. The knowledge must have gone somewhere!
Posted by bristlecone | September 19, 2007 3:49 PM

Terry Pratchett, call your agent.

Also, I got 53 out of 60, which isn't bad for being 35 and still working on my bachelors (I had 15 gap years :) ).

Posted by jonathan | September 20, 2007 9:29 AM

57/60...I'm disappointed in what I missed though. I guess I felt compelled to do this but I have a problem with the conclusion. Some of this knowledge probably came to me post-MBA. We should never stop learning.

Posted by Michael W | September 20, 2007 9:36 AM

Even as a foreigner (German), I got 75% right. If students at Harvard are really that unknowing, then I can pride myself that I am better than an Ivory League student on his own countries history (As a student of KIT (Karlsruher Institute of Technology), that makes me a bit proud ;) ).

Posted by Max | September 20, 2007 9:36 AM

53/60, engineer. Got every question wrong that asked about a philosopher (bad luck that) and a few of the founding fathers questions. Plus, is 'The War of 1812 was a stalemate' really taken a plain statement of fact? That's not my recollection from 11th grade.

Posted by Lou | September 20, 2007 10:26 AM

Canadian, 46/60. Based strictly on what I learned in high school and university, I would have scored well into the single digits. The ones I got right I owe mainly to Alex Trebek.

Posted by Sean E | September 20, 2007 10:45 AM

"Plus, is 'The War of 1812 was a stalemate' really taken a plain statement of fact? That's not my recollection from 11th grade."

Well, in Canada we were taught that Canada won, the US lost and the Brits provided the refreshments. There may have been some regional bias involved though.

Posted by Sean E | September 20, 2007 10:47 AM

I got 55/60
while scoring an avg 51% is pretty bad it makes sense that kids will better in hifh school because almost all of them will have recently taken US history classes, of course many of them may not have paid any attention in class.

Posted by AlexatBard | September 20, 2007 11:24 AM

58/60 here (guessed Jamestown was founded in the wrong century and as I hated macro I forgot everything I ever learned about the Federal Reserve as fast as I could). I did detect a conservative/libertarian tilt to some of the questions, especially 49 and 50. For example, the "correct" answer to 49 uses a very positive-connoting term ("individual citizens") in describing free enterprise even though it makes the answer patently inaccurate. Businesses, which control a heck of a lot of goods and resources, are typically neither individuals nor citizens.

Posted by Elliot Reed | September 20, 2007 12:15 PM

60/60. Wasn't sure on a few. I'm sure I would have improved from Freshman to Senior year (mostly from taking philosophy courses). The 28 years since graduation haven't hurt either.

Does anyone know the standard deviation on these scores? I'm wondering if the scores were brought down by a large group that blew the test off completely.

Posted by Bob R | September 20, 2007 12:23 PM

I don't know of any good reason why you wouldn't count all Social Security expenditures. That said, it's very close (about 10%), so I don't think it's reasonable to expect most students to know this. A better question would be relative expenditures on the military and all income assistance programs lumped together.

Posted by Brandon Berg | September 20, 2007 12:24 PM

"Even as a foreigner (German), I got 75% right."

Well done, Max! I bet if you made a similar quiz based on German national history and culture, I'd do far worse than 75%.

And I think it's VERY interesting when non-Americans do BETTER than Americans on such quizzes as this.

Posted by liberalrob | September 20, 2007 12:35 PM

I blew the Just War Theory one, too. But as a scientist, I'd say that these are mostly things a person should know.

The talk on the site of "negative learning" makes for a good headline, but another explanation could be that the freshman (for whatever reason, and it beats me) have had a better education coming in than the seniors did. Be interesting to check the results at the same schools over four years, though. . .

Posted by Derek Lowe | September 20, 2007 12:44 PM

I was looking over the questions (to annoyingly nitpick) and I noticed that #3 does not list the correct answer. The answer they accept, "indirect democracy", is wrong. Nothing in the original Constitution establishes indirect democracy. The closest it comes is:

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

Had a state decided to make its electors for the state legislature a single person, (ie, a governor appointing all of the state's legislators) then the governor could also appoint all of the states representitives to congress.

The Constitution established a republic, not an indirect democracy. Granted, it was almost guaranteed to be an indirect democracy, but not certain.

Posted by Njorl | September 20, 2007 1:24 PM

I missed some of the dates and which philosopher said what questions... but then I usually just look that stuff up. I aced the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, though...

I would have done better when I was in school and actually used this stuff.

EI

Posted by Earnest Iconoclast | September 20, 2007 1:36 PM

Oops... meant to say that I got a 50/60.

EI

Posted by Earnest Iconoclast | September 20, 2007 1:36 PM

I got an 81.67%

would have been higher except i thought andrew johnson was andrew jackson.

Posted by freaktown | September 20, 2007 2:03 PM

57. You mean that "Andrew Johnson" isn't "Andrew Jackson"? Ah, the perils of scanning.

Freaktown- just noticed you fell for it too. "Foul", I cried (but no one heard).

Posted by kreiz | September 20, 2007 3:45 PM

I only missed the first question (which I should feel sheepish about). I had no idea who ISI going into this, but from the general tone of the questions I felt almost certain they were going to ask for my address so they could send along my complimentary copy of The Closing of the American Mind.

Posted by the blackbird is involved | September 20, 2007 3:48 PM

Shouldn't this be curved for those of us who have been out of undergrad school for more than 40 years? Just wondering.

Posted by kreiz | September 20, 2007 3:49 PM

Well, my HS senior daughter got 49/60. Don't think that was bad for a music/math/science type. She is picking schools based on the quality of sax instruction, so I don't think her score will help or hurt me much. (Gonna be expensive either way.)

I agree with blackbird that the emphasis on content and lack of opportunity to substitute invective for actual knowledge of fact was a clear signal of conservative bias.

Posted by Bob R | September 20, 2007 8:32 PM

I'd just like to point out to folks here something you may need to be reminded of: many of the events in the test, such as the Cold War, Vietnam, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, are recent enough for many (not all, I'm sure) of you to have lived through, or for them to have loomed culturally large during your upbringing. This is not true of the students you are so casually mocking. I just graduated from college. I was five when the Berlin Wall fell. I was seven when the USSR collapsed. Few people my age know the "Tear Down This Wall" speech because by the time we were old enough to care, the Cold War had been won and we were moving on. It's not nearly so vivid for those of us who have never really had to live under the threat of nuclear holocaust. Cut the kids a little slack.

PS - I got 52/60.

Posted by Randomscrub | September 20, 2007 11:03 PM

Randomscrub: I'd like to introduce you to a little thing called "books." They convey something called "information." This is a way to "learn" things that one didn't experience firsthand.

Posted by David Nieporent | September 20, 2007 11:25 PM

Just so that everybody is clear about the "methodology" of this study, this is how the survey is conducted at Harvard University.

1. Slightly sketchy looking kids sneak into dining halls by piggybacking through locked doors, back exits, whatever.
2. Slightly sketchy looking kids stand around, looking awkward and more sketch than before. People eating dinner wonder if they are trying to steal something.
3. Sketchy kids begin to ask people to take surveys. This is common in Harvard's dining halls, but most of the student-surveyors are peppy, happy and assertive people who are overjoyed to explain what class/research project the survey is for. The sketchy kids, meanwhile, are as vague as possible about who they are (trying to avoid saying that they aren't Harvard students, that the goal of the survey is to denigrate the students who take it), why they are doing the survey, and whether all the personal information on it really needs to be filled out.
4. As few people as possible do the survey. I imagine that those who do fill it out (would you want to do this while you were eating with your friends?) do it either as quickly as humanly possible or with malice aforethought.

Posted by jt | September 21, 2007 4:49 AM

And now that I've done the test (93% at 4am, not too shabby), I declare it to be shot through with shoddy logic and blatant ideology. The worst is #57, of course... while it's clear what they want, in reality an observed rise in ticket costs could say a large number of things about trends in demand (most obviously, that demand has been rising and prices are rising as part of tatonnement). And why so many simplistic questions about political philosophers? Plato doesn't do policy recommendations, he does dialogues.

Posted by jt | September 21, 2007 4:57 AM

Ok, I ended up having to take the da*ned thing. The questions asked were more illuminating than the results, fer shur. It reeked of several different minds putting the test together, one saying, "I'm tired of all that crap they ask, let's ask some relevant cultural questions." Another wanted to show anyone not in her ivy league school wasn't worth a fart and went for the more esoteric questions. A third felt bad for the prospective test takers and tried to keep the middle third of people happy by throwing in a bunch of bones to puff up the score.

Oh, yeah, jt, if you're into dialogues, go back to the 'Conservative Court' thread and read the the comments from about 65 to 75. What Wesleyen grads call, 'Engaging the Mind.'

Posted by beneficial | September 21, 2007 7:44 AM

57/60 -- though I'd dispute one of my 'wrong' answers. The differences between Harvard students and blog readers is interesting -- we're not normal, folks.

I'll bet very few Americans would score that high on an equivalent Canadian test.

So what would you say are the major events in Canadian history (after which the world would never be the same) that all the people in the world should know about? I'm trying to think of something post 1812 but am coming up empty.

Posted by Slocum | September 21, 2007 9:41 AM

49/60. Would have aced it right after AP US History in high school, but forgot most of the details after not touching US history in undergrad. Now trying to remember more of it for Constitutional Law...

Posted by Kat | September 21, 2007 1:43 PM

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. -- Thomas Jefferson

Posted by Shakespeare's Fool | September 21, 2007 4:50 PM

I got a 60/60 in part by good luck (I happen to be interested in economics and some of the periods of history of ideas which were emphasized, so I've read a lot more about those subjects than, say, the history of American literature).

The main thing this quiz got me thinking about is how important civic literacy really is. The scary realization was that other people's civic literacy affects me quite a bit because errors are much less likely to be self correcting than in other areas of life.

When I consider buying an iPhone, it's easy to get reviews from people who know the direct effects of the technology. It's not even hard for me to identify reviewers who don't have a strong motive to bias their answers. In contrast, there is almost no such thing as an unbiased political reviewer on a question like whether we should have higher marginal tax rates. Most people involved in politics gain (whether monetarily or emotionally) based on convincing others -- not based on how happy their recommendations make those who follow them. For good measure, political discourse about controversial questions in economics often has more false statements than true ones, so it's not a viable strategy to treat politicians as economics experts.

Posted by Telnar | September 21, 2007 7:36 PM

A mixed bag, for sure. Some of the questions were so easy, they made me laugh, e.g. the last battle of the Revolutionary War. I immediately thought Yorktown, but I wasn't *positive*, and then I looked at the choices --- Gettysburg, Alamo --- are you freakin joking?

And I'll go out on a limb and say Bush would get less than half of them right.

Posted by Brock | September 22, 2007 6:53 AM

I got an 85%. Frankly, I'm far more concerned that regular readers of an economic/political blog are surprised that the average individual doesn't have an intricate grasp of American political and economic history than I am about the results per se.

Given that the average college senior spans the major range from Art History to Business to Chinese, and that knowledge of American civics isn't particularly valuable for a whole range of studies, it seems rational for a number of students to limit their knowledge here. (I'll make an exception for economics as a subject, but at the level that it's discussed here it still isn't a particularly useful tool.) Plus, the incentive to do well on a test that means nothing to them is pretty much nil. 70% doesn't seem like a terrible average for such a random test.

Perhaps spending more time thinking about the causes of these results instead of patting yourselves on the back about how smart you are (and how dumb the kids today must be) would be fruitful.

Posted by Geoff | September 23, 2007 1:31 AM

I actually scored 100%. Of course, I went to high school in 1959-1961 when American History was at least taught, although such economics as was taught was purely Keynesian; and I never finished college.

I imagine that teachers and professors are much too busy teaching about America being the source of all evil to have any time left to teach what happened and what was thought at the time that it happened, instead of that which fits, no matter how forced, into their marxist or nihilist theories.

Posted by Louis Spielman | September 23, 2007 12:55 PM

Good site! I'll stay reading! Keep improving!

Posted by George | November 10, 2007 10:21 AM