Monday, November 24, 2008

Well, That's Depressing

As the economy teeters on the brink and we prepared to (hopefully) recover the country from the horror of The Duhbya Years, here's a news report (via Kos) that reports that we might not be in the best hands:

US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.

Ordinary citizens did not fare much better, scoring just 49 percent correct on the 33 exam questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).

'It is disturbing enough that the general public failed ISI's civic literacy test, but when you consider the even more dismal scores of elected officials, you have to be concerned,' said Josiah Bunting, chairman of the National Civic Literacy Board at ISI.
Actually, what's really depressing is that the test questions cover really basic stuff. You can take it for yourself here.

I'm not the brightest bulb in the box and I got 84.85% (28 of 33) right. In fact, the questions I missed were all in the free market cheerleading section (after Q 26) at the end, so I think I aced the actual "how government works" hunk. If you don't know that stuff, you got no business in Congress. Hell, I'm not ever sure you have any business voting for Congress!

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