Civics Quiz
Here's an interesting civics quiz you can take online. 60 multiple choice questions testing your basic civic literacy.
Word is that most college seniors actually get failing grades, but I have no doubt anyone intelligent enough to read Pajama Guy will pass with flying colors.
posted by LAGuy @ 2:04 AM
10 Comments:
95 percent, baby. And I'll bet I'm the lowest scoring of the Guys.
95 percent as well. I didn't know the Keynes point or the "just war" theory, and just brain-faded on military as public good.
I won't reveal my score except to say it was better than ColumbusGuy's.
We have certain standards here at Pajama Guy. Anyone who scores under 90% can't write for us. How do you think they'd score at CNN?
"National Defense is a public good because" among others, is a phrase of more than one meaning (is it an economics question or a value statement?)
"Public good" is an economic term. It's in opposition to a private good. It means a good that everyone can enjoy, and that one person enjoying does not prevent another person from enjoying. It's not a value judgment, either. You don't have to think broadcast television is good for it to be a "public good."
I understand "public good" is an economics term but the phrase can be used to describe a "virtuous thing" I was objecting to the indeterminacy of the usage- the test makers haven't kept up with usage and would likely not do well on a basic test of written English
Part of the talent of a good test-taker is the ability to deal with slight ambiguities in language -- to understand what is actually being asked when there's more than one interpretation.
National Defense is a classic example of a public good, so any question that delves into this issue is easy enough to resolve if you know about the subject.
I'm guessing LAGuy pulled in 115 percent. But I'll bet he took longer than I did. Plus, my pencil broke.
SWMBCg, etc.
"National Defense is a public good" sounds like an O'Reilly quote. The test is a farce
I scored 58/60 = 96.7%. I got # 58 and # 60 wrong; on both of them I chose C but the true answers were B.
I was unsure about these two, as well as 10 (hesitated between B and E), 19, and 54.
Quibbles:
15. You can't really separate Roe v. Wade from Doe v. Bolton, which was released the same day. RvW legalized abortion in the first trimester, and DvB legalized many abortions in the second and third trimesters. But each of them ends with a sentence saying that the two opinions are inseparable. So really # 15 should mention both cases.
24. C is defensible depending on how you define "ultimate", but D looked better.
27. This is epistemology, not civics -- what's it doing here?
36. They need to be more specific, e.g., "traditional just-war theory" or something like that.
43. This question is badly posed, since "balance of power" can mean different things in different contexts. I guessed A, and the site says I was right, but I don't actually believe it.
50. This is the first time that the writer unambiguously revealed his/her biases.
53. I chose B because they clearly wanted me to, but it's still incorrect. "National defense is considered a public good because residents benefit from it without having to individually pay for it"? Something that is a public good must be (1) a good and (2) publicly so. They are assuming the first of these. (Saying that something is "a good" because people "benefit" from it is tautological.) And I am not comfortable with their definition of the second of these. Suppose that we had a state where everyone was equally rich, and everyone paid the same share of taxes, and if you didn't pay taxes you were executed. Then by their definition there would be no such thing as a "public good". That seems odd to me.
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