A civics quiz

About a year ago the Huntsville Times changed its op-ed page. Now they have a "from the left" and a "from the right" columnist each day. I don't remember his name, but one day this week one of the "from the right" guys was ranting about how poorly students at elite colleges do on a "civics quiz" given by some institute every year. I've seen this complaint before.

Evidently the institute gives the quiz to incoming freshman and then gives it again to seniors. The big news is not that students fail to make a 100% on the quiz. No the BIG NEWS is that they don't really do any better after 4 years of elite college education. Essentially, some folks claim that universities no longer try to teach basic civic knowledge -- U.S. history, philosophy, economics, government, etc. I agree, though I don't know if I'm as upset as some are by that.

Anyway, the "from the right" guy provided a link to the quiz. I don't want to reveal my score yet, but let me just say I was scared I'd do a lot worse than I did -- though I guessed on a couple and my knowledge of economics really saved me on some of the later questions. Anyway, take the quiz and see how you do. According to the "from the right" guy, the best of the elite colleges only averaged a 69% or so (at least that's what I remember).

Addendum: Since no one else seems inclined to play, or at least report results, I'll tell you my results. In the spirit of the quiz, I'll report my score in "civics" terms. I correctly answered 1/10th[the number of (voting) members of the House of Representatives + number of U.S. Senators + # of Federal Reserve districts + # of U.S. Presidents (so far) from Tennessee] out of 60 questions. I was actually kind of proud of that, though I did kick myself for missing the last question -- I overlooked that it was only asking about federal spending. Of course if I hadn't gone to grad school in econ, I'd probably have missed several more. I just looked back over the quiz and I'd say I'd probably have missed 4 or maybe 5 more questions if I'd just had the basic principles of econ classes years ago.