10/10. As a pretty hard-core history buff, I’d have been unhappy with less. I do agree with those who feel that history is poorly taught at present. I doubt I could have done well on this test, based only on what I learned in High school. And I doubt that my
eleventh-grade son or college-sophomore daughter could do very well on it.
Ten out of ten. Its beyond easy, if you don’t know this stuff I wonder if you should be able to vote.
Yeah, a literacy testing for voting. Boy those were the days…:rolleyes:
Missed the “closing the froniter” ?, though the answer smh! Missed #1 because it has multiple correct answers imo.
[nit pick] a literacy test for voting [/nitpick] :smack:
10/10. The only ones that gave me any pause were the meat trade, and the closing of the frontier. I knew that sugar and rum were major exports during that time, so I got the right answer, even though I wasn’t aware that pickled meat was such a huge commodity at the time. The frontier one threw me, because I didn’t realize that the “closing of the frontier” was something measurable - I’d assumed it was a phrase used by historians to refer to a particular period of time. But none of the other answers made any sense in connection to the quote - the guy was clearly talking about the frontier in some fashion, so that’s the one I went with.
10/10. I was surprised by the varying degree of difficulty in the questions. The Turner question involved some relatively obscure historical knowledge and the apprentice question was almost an opinion poll. But then other questions were ridiculously easy: who doesn’t know that black people were freed from slavery as a consequence of the Civil War or that a swastika represents Nazi Germany?
These sorts of tests tell us a whole lot, and a whole lot of nothing.
For as long as the American public school system has been going, there have been all sorts of media jeremiads about the abysmal level of historical knowledge among the nation’s schoolchildren. The New York Times ran a whole bunch of stories about the issue in 1942-43, and as far back as the late nineteenth century some historians and politicians expressed concern about how much history American children didn’t know. And despite the constant wailing and gnashing of teeth, the republic has not yet collapsed under the weight of its own historical ignorance.
Even more problematic is that these sort of tests confirm in the minds of many people an idea of history that is completely divorced from what real history is all about. History is not a set of facts, a compilation of names and dates and events reducible to multiple-choice questions. History is, or should be, a way of thinking, a concern with understanding people and places that are both familiar and yet also incredibly strange, and a devotion to reading and analyzing and synthesizing and debating.
I got 10/10.
The Kiddo, who turns 13 in a couple weeks, got 7/10.
He missed the counting of slaves, Washington’s foreign policy, and the Frederick Jackson Turner question. Those last two were the ones that almost tripped me up as well.
I agree that a real knowledge of history is when you can think about historical events and apply this knowledge in other situations.
But the first step is having a basic knowledge of historical facts.
10/10 with a lucky guess on the Frederick Turner Jackson one.
9/10
Weird quiz though. I’d say 8 or 9 of 10 were softball “HOW CAN YOU NOT KNOW THIS?!” questions.
But Frederick Jackson Turner? I’m a news and politics hound, loved history in middle and high school and until this quiz I had never once heard of this guy. Not once. Ever. I got it right by reading the passage and inferring from the dates, but either my (excellent) public schooling failed me here or I’ve got a weird case of highly specific amnesia.
And the one about apprenticeship - WTF? That was the one I missed, by guessing immigrants. Is that another thing we are supposed to know from civics class? That question seemed a bit wacky.
Actually, i wasn’t making that argument. I was arguing that the study of history teaches particular skills and modes of thinking that can be broadly applied, but i think that your claim about applying historical knowledge “in other situations” is far too mechanistic, and many people also get too hung up on the idea that specific historical knowledge needs to have some utilitarian purpose.
Sure, but people get too hung up on this, to the detriment of broader understanding. There’s constant wailing and gnashing of teeth over people not knowing THIS fact or THAT fact, and it’s all rather unproductive. Knowing whether or not a student recognizes Turner’s frontier thesis, or Washington’s position on foreign alliances, doesn’t really tell me much at all about that student’s actual analytical and reasoning abilities.
Nothing failed you, in my opinion.
Turner was an incredibly important figure within the American history profession, and his frontier thesis informed many people who came after him, whether they agreed with or took issue with his work. His observations about the frontier are also, in and of themselves, an interesting historical source for the way that some late nineteenth-century Americans perceived the nation’s development.
But, while i raise the issue of Turner and the frontier in my college classes at times when i think it’s relevant, i don’t assume that my students have ever heard of him, and i don’t think that America is somehow failing its children if they leave high school not knowing who Turner is.
Many women in the American Revolution were officers in the army or gave speeches to rally the people against the British?
9/10. I missed the one about Washington’s foreign policy. I don’t recall spending much time on the presidency of George Washington. My history classes tended to spend tons of time on the settling of America and the Revolutionary War then sort of mumble mumble through a few decades after that. Something about the Alien and Sedition Acts and Marbury v. Madison.
I got 10/10, but my older brother was a history lover (& eventually a teacher) who started me young. I graduated HS in 1975. None of the history teachers I had there were worth a damn. It was one of the teaching spots that was filled by football or basketball coaches, whether they knew the subject or not. So, I wonder how much of this is “today’s kids are dumb” as opposed to “the teachers still suck”.
I’ve never heard of him and didn’t even bother reading the quote, still got the question right. Which, to my mind, pretty much proves that it’s an excessively easy question to answer.
Brit, 8/10, didn’t (and don’t) understand the term “closing of the frontier”, and got the first one wrong, went for the women speechifying.
10/10
9/10
Missed the George Washington question too.