Pop quiz on politics

It's pop quiz time for North Carolina politicos.

In his Sunday column, N&O reporter Rob Christensen noted that high school students didn't do well on a civic quiz given by the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

He also shared his grade: 88 percent, or seven out of 60 questions wrong.

On BlueNC, lefty blogger Anglico attacked the quiz as "dramatically tilted" in favor of "dead white men" and a "free-market extremist test." He also shared his grade: 83 percent.

WUNC reporter Laura Leslie scored an 85 and News 14 reporter Tim Boyum was in the high 70s.

In the interest of full disclosure, your chief Dome blogger also took the test and got an 88 percent. (The Monroe Doctrine tripped us up.)

At least one of the questions would be a favorite of John Hood et al. No. 26: The Declaration of Independence relies most obviously on the political thought of...

The answer: John Locke, natch.

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Re: Pop quiz on politics

Submitted by blculbre on December 3, 2007 - 8:19pm.

86.67. I really need to go study economics again though...

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Thanks.

Submitted by Anglico on December 3, 2007 - 8:09pm.

There are a ton of tests out there on the interTubes, including this interesting one.

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Re: Pop quiz on politics

Submitted by danmanley2299 on December 3, 2007 - 7:51pm.

Anyone surprised that Gerry got 95%? The million dollar question is which ones did he miss? care to share?

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Re: Pop quiz on politics

Submitted by Cdickson on December 3, 2007 - 7:30pm.

90 here - wish I was as smart and handsome as Gerry Cohen.

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Re: Pop quiz on politics

Submitted by gercohen on December 3, 2007 - 6:30pm.

95 here. I have no earthly idea why I retained that much useless information.

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Re: That'll teach me

Submitted by ryanteaguebeckwith on December 3, 2007 - 5:26pm.

My apologies. I meant to include the link. I've added it now.

I agree that there were a lot more questions on economics than I'm used to seeing on civics tests. Although they weren't my weak spot on the test, that could skew the results for high schoolers.

From my own experience, Keynesian economics did not come up in Mr. Seidel's class at Bellevue High.

— RTB

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That'll teach me

Submitted by Anglico on December 3, 2007 - 5:23pm.

That'll teach me to put such a high premium on transparency.

Seriously, I wish you had linked to my web post, not just the shrill criticism.

Rob Christensen's December 2 column has an analysis of what he considers the state of civics education in the United States, based on a test created by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Christensen's column wraps with a link to this test, which I found hard, somewhat bizarre, and dramatically tilted in favor of knowing all about the kind of dead white men these people adore. And what does Christensen have to say in the interest of full disclosure?

ISI is a conservative-leaning organization founded in 1953.

If you follow my link to the ISI website, you will discover that "conservative leaning" describes ISI about as well as "objective reporter" describes Rob Christensen himself. The website features The Conservative Mind as part of its top-level navigation, Clarence Thomas, as an honored lecturer, with links throughout the site to Townhall.com.

Cheers! And keep those tests coming!

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Re: Pop quiz on politics

Submitted by dahedgehog on December 3, 2007 - 5:11pm.

All I know is that if Bob Orr put out a press release claiming to have scored a 112, that the claim would show up unchallenged on Under the Dome...especially if he used that claim to show why illegal immigrants should be denied educational opportunities.

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