How is education supposed to make me feel smarter?
Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home wine making course, and I forgot how to drive?”
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/01/14/opinion-who-are-the-constitutional-illiterates/
Well this is certainly good news. They country is full of people so ignorant that only 50% of us can correctly identify the 3 branches of government on a multiple choice test. (the article wasn't actually clear if the the exam was multiple choice or not. It is implied but never specified. The numbers are just so mind numbingly bad it would be nicer if it wasn't.) But that's not even the best news. The best news is that in a country full of people lacking even a 5th grade understanding of the way government works, we manage to select from among everyone in the country people who on average know even less to govern us. Now that is really heartwarming. No discrimination against stupidity in out public officials. In fact we prefer it. Of course this isn't really shocking news. Many people have suspected it for years, but now it's been scientifically demonstrated (albeit with a small sample size) that those elected officials who like to pretend they are o so smart, and o so important, are in fact dumber than paint. It not really surprising that the US is in decline with numbers like this, if anything it shocking we lasted as long as we did. I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that if you gave an exam like this to chinese students, or south korean students, that they will know more about our country/history/geography/government than our own students.
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/01/14/opinion-who-are-the-constitutional-illiterates/
Well this is certainly good news. They country is full of people so ignorant that only 50% of us can correctly identify the 3 branches of government on a multiple choice test. (the article wasn't actually clear if the the exam was multiple choice or not. It is implied but never specified. The numbers are just so mind numbingly bad it would be nicer if it wasn't.) But that's not even the best news. The best news is that in a country full of people lacking even a 5th grade understanding of the way government works, we manage to select from among everyone in the country people who on average know even less to govern us. Now that is really heartwarming. No discrimination against stupidity in out public officials. In fact we prefer it. Of course this isn't really shocking news. Many people have suspected it for years, but now it's been scientifically demonstrated (albeit with a small sample size) that those elected officials who like to pretend they are o so smart, and o so important, are in fact dumber than paint. It not really surprising that the US is in decline with numbers like this, if anything it shocking we lasted as long as we did. I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that if you gave an exam like this to chinese students, or south korean students, that they will know more about our country/history/geography/government than our own students.
posted by Trashcan at 1/18/2011 01:10:00 AM
3 Comments:
I got 10/10, which I take it must put me in the 99th percentile of people if the average score is so low. To be fair, one or two of the answers had already been made clear by the article before I got to the "You can take the quiz yourself -- click here."
So clearly the quiz *is* multiple choice. Take it yourself.
I did take that quiz, but that quiz was also only 10 questions, whereas the the exam they gave people was 30 or so questions. I don't remember exactly. The key is that the quizzes weren't identical. Maybe they just put 10 of the easier questions, gave multiple choice answer to make the readers feel smart. Probably it was multiple choice, but i'm not going to assume anything.
Assumption is the first step toward success. Assume everything.
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