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Nobody Knows Anything
NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING....Via Tyler Cowen, I see that the Intercollegiate Studies Institute has released the results of their annual test on civics and history. The outcomes, as usual, are supposedly abominable: fewer than a third of the 2,500 randomly selected test takers managed to score higher than 60%.
Now, you can decide for yourself how hard the test is and whether a score below 60% is really that bad. (The test is here.) I managed to get all the questions right, but still, there were a fair number that were pretty far from obvious for most people. Is it really that big a deal, for example, that most Americans don't know that Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas would concur that certain permanent moral and political truths are accessible to human reason? Especially when the question and the five possible answers are being read to them over the phone?
Like I said, you can decide for yourself. But I just want to highlight one particular result: the average score by age group. As regular readers know, one of my pet peeves is the endless number of tests given to high school students and then trumpeted as evidence that kids today are abysmally ignorant. The standard headline is something like "80% of high school seniors can't find France on a map," but what I always wonder is: how many adults can find France on a map? Unfortunately, they never tell us that.
But ISI does. And the results are pretty simple: everyone is stupid. ISI themselves spin this as "Baby Boomers Do Best," but speaking ex cathedra for my generation, I really don't think that 52% vs. 47% (an average difference of less than two correct answers) says much about the awesomeness of boomer cultural literacy. Basically, the kids didn't do very well on ISI's test, but neither did the adults or the seniors, even though their average educational level is higher. This may be only a single fairly dubious data point, but it's still worth keeping in mind the next time you see one of those "Kids Are Stupid" headlines.
Other ISI findings, by the way, include these: the more education you have, the better you do; it doesn't matter much what kind of university you went to, whether you go to church, or what your politics are; watching lots of TV is bad for your score; and reading lots of history is good for your score. So there you have it.
You answered 31 out of 33 correctly ? 93.94 %
Average score for this quiz during November: 78.1%
Average score: 78.1%
You answered 31 out of 33 correctly ? 93.94 %
Average score for this quiz during November: 78.1%
Average score: 78.1%
I got 31 of 33, and am quite happy. I know I got the Lincon-Douglas question wrong, as well as one about the wall between church and state. But there are some fairly obscure questions in the list. And to do this over the phone? I think that they should control for this somehow, maybe by having some "experts" take the test over the phone to set the standard. I know that I had to stop and re-read several of the questions to understand what the question really was.
Via Tyler Cowen????
Do you even read your own comments?
I understand mofo stands for fine investigative journalism, but sometimes that means READING YOUR OWN COMMENTS!
Uhh, linky seems to be broken..
What a silly quiz. The stats at the end indicate that the average correct answers is about 78% for November. Clearly a case of poorly worded questions combined with bad sampling. The inference to draw from this is "nothing."
The economics questions assumed rather a right-wing take on the world, with none of the qualifications about market failure that real economists happily acknowledge.
As to the allegedly woeful state of American knowledge of civics and history, that struck me as a pretty tough test. I reckon a science test of equivalent difficulty would probably result in much of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute getting a D or worse.
I took the test and thought there were a few problems with it. For one, it asks about free trade policy and then wants you to regurgitate something about comparative advantage and increased productivity. Instead of answering the question with the choice they offered, I felt like I should be offered the choice "sez you." They also had a question about the constittution that asked what powers the feds have under the consitution. There were two valid choices: make treaties and collect income taxes. I see that they have now gotten rid of the collect income taxes choice. But they were obviously ignorant of the 16th amendment or did not consider it part of the constitution. Also, I found the last question to be somewhat misleading. They say when taxes equal spending then tax per person equals spending per person. This is misleading because it sounds as if their is no redistribution going on, which there obviously is, especially if you live in Alaska. For that one I chose the option that government debt is zero thinking that since they had already made one mistake, maybe they meant to say deficit.
You ask me, it is a goofball test.
These questions are really poorly written.
Question #29 "what is a public good" is profoundly stupid--b and e are both equally defensible answers, and none of them are quite right.
Likewise, #33 is a very misleading question. Looking at all the answers, the best one would be to say that the deficit is zero, but that's not a choice. So, instead we have to rule out debt to prove clever enough to know the difference between the technical terms "deficit" and "debt", but then we have to be un-clever and choose a very unsatisfying answer that appears to be suggesting average spending and average taxation are the same, which is technically true but not applicable to the progressive tax tilt in the United States...
It's less an actual test of knowledge than a test of shibboleths. Which you can argue is a reasonable proxy for having knowledge (I mean, how else would you have learned the shibboleths, right?)...but I think you bias your test against genuinely smart people who evaluate problems on their merits, and bias it in favor of hacks when you set up a test of knowledge that's really a test of shibboleths.
Got em all, but at least four of the questions were phrased terribly. If you have to stop and think "what are they asking?" it becomes more of an exercise in deciphering the question than it is a test of civic knowledge. For example, the question about if taxes equaling spending, then... The answer is obvious but it is worded so awkwardly that it takes a minute to realize it.
And the test misquotes the Gettysburg Address, so I don't see how you're supposed to think that "of the people, for the people, by the people" is from that speech. (may have the misquote a little wrong, their site has crashed)
In addition, I agree with anonymiss, question 33 is really bad.
Of course, I missed those two.
Just "missed" #33 as well. Lousy question. Lousy answers. Otherwise boomers rule! Take that Barack n' Michelle
96.97%, or, one error out of all. Nothing brings out complainers like a test. I had to enter my J.D. as a doctoral degree, which in my opinion is silly institutitonal promotion by the legal industry. Where else can you get a degree that includes the descriptor "doctor" in 2.5 years after completing college, at least if one is in a hurry? I have not checked lately, but many states offered and may still offer the privilege of taking the bar exam after reading law in a lawyer's office for a set period of time. Back in the 1970's the reading period was seven years.
i was wavering between choices a) and b) on the lincoln-douglas question. ended up getting it wrong, so 32 out of 33 for me.
drbiker: That 78% is for online test takers in November. The study itself is based on a random telephone poll. Two different things.
(The telephone poll obviously creates problems for complex questions like this, but it's also random, which the online version isn't.)
I agree that several of the questions were poorly worded or just plain fuzzy. #33, for example, you might get wrong if you assumed the question writers were being sloppy and answered A.
Still, for my purposes, none of that matters. Whatever flaws the test has, it has them equally for all age groups. And kids did only slightly worse than adults. (In fact, if you adjusted for educational level, they might have done just as well.)
I missed 1 (and was a poli sci/history/econ major), but I must say that they aren't all that hard, but certainly can be confusing, and some rely implicitly on an American viewpoint. For instnace, why does "free market" lead to more prosperity than "central planning". The answer they give "local market knowledge" is pretty thin sauce. I got it right, but I think that's pretty debatable. Since I've taken hundreds of these tests over the years I could guess the answer they wanted when it wasn't clear, but seems like a neo-realist bias in the questions.)
I guess I'm a tad shocked that younger kids couldn't get more of these right. Some of these questions ("Where is wall of separation from?" and "What is the subject of the Lincoln Douglas debates?")are things I probably haven't thought of since high school.
I also concur with Kevin that if this was over the phone it would be a lot harder. Other than the easy rote questions ("Name a first amendment freedom), some of these are written in such a way that they need to be read a few times. You going to do that over the phone while dinner is getting cold, there is no money on the line and the kids are screaming? I think not.
Heh. All you people who thought you got 100% are wrong, wrong, wrong. You missed #7: What was the source of the following phrase: "Government of the people, for the people, by the people"?
The Gettysburg Address is not the source of that quote, for the Address reads "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." The words in the question appear nowhere in the Address.
Stupid test.
The only question I missed was 33 for all the reasons written above. It was a very poorly written question.
I am sort of stunned that people do so badly on this. I got 32 out of 33 and missed one because I carelessly misread the question. Sure not everyone has studied Plato or Aristotle etc -- but most of them are ordinary facts about the way the US government works. ( and Plato alone gives away that answer)
Missing half of them just simply makes you ignorant.
Ah, yes, 96%, just like the last time I took it a coupla months ago.
I missed the public good question both times (I went with E, not B - talked myself into it).
The basic problem with being annoyed with tests is that they often aren't very good tests. Since people will be tested, we need much better tests, dammit.
max
['That is all.']
Question 32 looks wrong as well. I'm pretty sure the Department of the Treasury issues federal securities, while the main policy tool of the Federal Reserve is to set the discount rate.
Thanks for defending the youngsters, but the data also suggest that higher rates of K-12 and college education (not many of those 65+ went to college) haven't made us any smarter. It would be great to split those age group numbers into college vs no college.
The more education you have, the better you do.
So that's my problem.
You ask me, it is a goofball test.
I'm inclined to agree. I'm one of the dumbest folks I know, and even I got 31/33.
And that's with a B.S. in English Lit.
The telephone does not transmit quality audio, which could be a reason why people do so poorly on these tests administered over the telephone. When only a portion of the audio information is received by the listener, a poor response might be expected.
From: http://knol.google.com/k/randall-mcmullan/sound-and-its-measurement/1hvm...
"A telephone, for example, transmits few frequencies above 3000 Hz and the exclusion of the higher overtones noticeably affects reproduction of the voice and of music."
The Anti-Federalists? Remembering them is important to understanding our modern civic structure how exactly? And remembering the nature of Stevens's debates with Lincoln?
In any case, those were the two I got wrong, so I'm probably just biased.
Also, I thought a bunch of the questions near the end had little to do with civics, though at least most weren't exceptionally partisan in the answers that were required.
Kerri Miller on MN public radio covered this a couple of weeks ago. You can access her archive at MPR. I got 88+% and was pretty pleased with myself but was unaware it was taken over the phone. I had to reread several questions and got a couple by elimination.
Then again, I am a furner and didn't learn anything about you guys before the tea party and since Yorktown, so most of it has been by interest and osmosis.
There are two "correct" answers for #33, and don't tell me there ain't: A and D.
I scored 100%. I must be effing brilliant!
My own ideological biases would have led me to answer a few questions differently, e.g #31, but I always answered in accordance with the conventional wisdom on non-factual questions, and so scored better than if I had given what would be IMO more honest answers.
What was so hard about #33? Only one answer could be true.
After all that chest-thumping, though, I have to admit that if I'd had to take the test by telephone I would no doubt have done much, much worse.
I want to see W's score on this.
Oops, I'm behind the times. How about Sarah Palin's score?
I also missed 33, but in retrospect the answer given is obviously right. Spending=Revenue, so Spending/Person must equal Revenue/Person, right? It's kind of a trick question, but right all the same.
On the other hand, the government not having any debt is obviously bullshit. In 2000 government revenue was greater than spending, but there still was an enormous national debt.
As to the Fed, the Fed doesn't issue government securities, but it does buy and sell them, in addition to setting the discount rate, and such.
I got 'em all right, and I'm British. I guessed on the Anti-Federalist question, though, and just held my nose and put in the answer I knew they were looking for for the capitalism question.
Well if Thersites can get 100%, no doubt Inkblot will score 120%!
In Fareed Zakaria's book The Post-American World (the one about the destruction and enslavement of America under an Islamic caliphate that Obama reads... so I've been told) he addresses the part about high schoolers can't find ___ on a map. America's *good* schools, even the good public schools, kids rate among the top of the world in those tests. But when you throw in all the poor kids, it kills our stats. So obviously the problem is our lower class is getting a shitty education, which we've known for a while ---and hardly addressed, outside of briefly every four years. I heard a line about every candidate who claims to be the Education President: he won't be.
I'm skeptical. I think bad results are being cooked up in order to advance the organization's interests. I got 32 out of 33, and while I would like to think that my civic knowledge is well into the upper reaches of the top percentile (as they claim,) when I see that most of the commenters so far are also in the category I start to think... we couldn't all be that smart. And frankly, the questions weren't that hard.
Aside from nitpicking I didn't think I deserved any of the three wrongs I got). The age distro is about what I would expect, people do slightly gain in knowledge as they age, until they get too old. So that makes perfect sense. Yes probably 80% of the questions are embarassingly easy -and some are a bit questionable from a test design standpoint. The roughly 50% score reported is not unreasonable, considering other results for general knowledge I've seen.
Of course letting people retake it every month, no wonder November results are so much better. Ans online test takers are probably self-selected anyway.
A good test is one on which I do well, a bad test just the opposite. I got 'em all but two, so this is a good test. And I'm in retail, so how hard could it be?
Wagster,
Kevin Drum's regulars are all that smart. That is why they read him.
The correct headline for this post would have been "Nobody knows nuthin'."
I got 'em all right, too, and I'd have to say that my answers were almost entirely based on stuff I learned before my 20th birthday, so it didn't seem all that hard to me -- as much a matter of remembering as of knowing.
But, as several posters have already noted, this would be a lot harder over the phone, and it's not surprising that most people forget this stuff almost as soon as they learn it. The same would be true if you asked respondents about conjugating French verbs or the theorems used for geometry proofs.
As Sydney Carton notes, the problem for the U.S. isn't that kids don't learn anything, so much as that kids in bad schools don't learn enough. But in the long run, most of those who receive a good education forget the stuff that the other half never learned.
I'm reminded of the kids who lived in my dorm in Japan, and who were among those who helped Japan score at the top of one international math test or another. Those kids were wizards at algebra and geometry when they were 17 and 18, but by age 22 or 23 they didn't know any more than my cousins in Massachusetts and New York.
Pfew. It's good to know that all us idiots leaving comments at blogs aren't really idiots after all.
Ron Byers: Kevin Drum's regulars are all that smart.
Speak for yourself!
Ron Byers: Kevin Drum's regulars are all that smart.
Speak for yourself!
I'm definitely a factor of the LAUSD. I mean product. Maybe moran.
I scored 100%. I suppose I could blush prettily and simply credit my native genius, but a talent for regurgitating trivia and puzzling out multiple-choice tests is not a marker for brilliance. It wasn't a great test.
I think it is good that American students are not learning much about history, economics and civics.(Harvard students scored the best -69% or D-.) All that has produced is the most evil nation on earth. If we dumb them down and teach them palnetray kosmic consciousness, we will produce better world citizens.
Plus it gives the rest of the wolrd to cathc up and even bypass us...a little social justice. ...you know, spread the brains around and give evryone a fair shot.
You answered 31 out of 33 correctly 93.94 %
Average score for this quiz during November: 78.1%
Average score: 78.1%
I got 32 of 33, but that's mainly because I could read the questions and reason out a few that I wasn't sure on. If I'd been read this test over the phone I can almost guarantee I'd have missed at least 3 or 4 more.
Mike
I missed two: One because I just didn't think through the answers carefully and one because I don't know as much as I should about the anti-Federalists. But really, could anyone with a college education find this test difficult? I'm no genius but most of the answers were automatic; and those that weren't could be figured out by process of elimination. But, as noted, that process would be tricky listening to the answers read over the phone.
I got one wrong. Missed the one about the Anti-federalists. This reminded me about how tests are often ridiculous. I remember when I took the SAT, I got a 800 on the verbal section (720 math--this was before they changed it), and I was damn proud of myself for a long time.
Then I went to college, and I realized that standardized tests are basically meaningless at a high level. My 99th percentile score only reflected my odd skill of playing the rules behind the test questions, which are only tangentially related to actual thought. I went through college convinced that my test-score advantage was totally undeserved.
Still, I remain convinced that most people are utterly ignorant about the basic facts of civics, mathematics, economics, and science. Admittedly, it's an unscientific conclusion. It started when I took a survey of all the Methodists I could find in high school, asking them 1) who John Wesley was, and 2) what the Holy Trinity was. Only 2/27 knew 1 and 4/27 knew 2. It's bolstered by the random surveys and conversations I overhear. Care to gainsay?