Wednesday, September 19, 2007

The state of education

Over at American Civic Literacy, they have a 60 question quiz on US civics.

How well can you do?

I took the test and got 59 out of 60. The only question I missed was:

"The question of why democracy leads to well-ordered government in America when disorder prevails in Europe is central to: "

The test is here: http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx

The sad part is how poorly many folks do.

1 comment:

John of Argghhh! said...

I was surprised how much of my political philosophy I remembered.

But, to my mind, any competently educated person who applied themselves remotely in school should have gotten at least an 80% on that test.

But as you saw, that's not the case.

I didn't dig - I wonder how it works across the age cohort - can you watch a general decline over time, i.e., the oldsters doing better than the youngsters, because we were educated under a different pedagogical paradigm.