# US Civics test - how well can YOU do? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 1, 2011, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023 "2011-06-01T23:56:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/101 "2011-06-02T22:59:36Z")
I got 93.94% ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/102 "2011-06-02T23:32:01Z")
Anyone know of a British or Canadian equivalent test? ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/103 "2011-06-02T23:36:04Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > 31/33. Maybe I should have gotten the government receipts vs expenditures one, but to be fair, if this happened **every** year, then the government debt **would** be zero. Only if a portion of the budget every year went to paying down the debt. If we maintained deficit-free spending for a century, but never devoted a cent to paying down the debt, the debt would never shrink. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/104 "2011-06-02T23:37:08Z")
69.7% I really, really suck at economics. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Mondegreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/91b2a8/32.png) [@Lord\_Mondegreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Mondegreen)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/105 "2011-06-02T23:52:04Z")
28/33 (84.85%) Better than I was expecting given that I live half a world away from the US. College educators averaged 55%? That’s not very encouraging. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/106 "2011-06-03T00:01:23Z")
You answered 27 out of 33 correctly — 81.82 % ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/107 "2011-06-03T00:13:24Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > Only if a portion of the budget every year went to paying down the debt. If we maintained deficit-free spending for a century, but never devoted a cent to paying down the debt, the debt would never shrink. You misunderstand. Every year means every year, going back into perpetuity. If you never have a year where you spend more than you take in, you’ll never have a debt. ---
**Author:** ![RadicalPi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/radicalpi/32/9806_2.png) [@RadicalPi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RadicalPi)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/108 "2011-06-03T02:32:33Z")
I didn’t like this question: Question: The phrase that in America there should be a “wall of separation” between church and state appears in: Correct Answer: Thomas Jefferson’s letters. The question is about a phrase, which is found in a more or less obscure place, but even if the phrase is absent the idea of a wall seems a clear part of the first amendment. The idea seems to be that if the phrase is not part of important historical government documents that the idea is not there either. The other one that got to me was: “Question: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas would concur that:” which seeks to link Christian morality to current morality purely because of the roughly empirical approach each took to deciding moral questions. I guess I feel this way even though only one of them, St. Thomas Aquinas was a Christian philospher. I know that these objections aren’t exactly a surprise, but it’s just been bothering me, and I had to get it out. The question that did surprise me was the Sputnik one. How is it that something the Russians did is part of American civics? I know Sputnik had a dramatic effect on American society, but the event itself has nothing to do with the United States, and that’s what the question asked about. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/109 "2011-06-03T02:47:47Z")
> [@RadicalPi](#): > > I didn’t like this question: > > Question: The phrase that in America there should be a “wall of separation” between church and state appears in: > Correct Answer: Thomas Jefferson’s letters. > > The question is about a phrase, which is found in a more or less obscure place, but even if the phrase is absent the idea of a wall seems a clear part of the first amendment. The idea seems to be that if the phrase is not part of important historical government documents that the idea is not there either. At least they had that much in the quiz. The real fundies are convinced that all the Founders were fundies and therefore this nation was founded as a fundietopia, God’s waiting room on Earth. > [@](#): > > The other one that got to me was: “Question: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas would concur that:” which seeks to link Christian morality to current morality purely because of the roughly empirical approach each took to deciding moral questions. I guess I feel this way even though only one of them, St. Thomas Aquinas was a Christian philospher. I’m interested in how they could torture the definition of ‘civics’ to include the question at all. It’s a valid question in the field of historical philosophy, but it isn’t connected to American civic education in any obvious fashion. > [@](#): > > The question that did surprise me was the Sputnik one. How is it that something the Russians did is part of American civics? I know Sputnik had a dramatic effect on American society, but the event itself has nothing to do with the United States, and that’s what the question asked about. And they simply asked _what it was_, not _what impact it had_ or, and this would have been most relevant, _what it caused America in specific to do_. _That_, more than anything else, made it a bad question for this quiz. Also, to amplify a general theme, since when does civics include quite so much economics? ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/110 "2011-06-03T02:49:39Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > You misunderstand. Every year means every year, going back into perpetuity. If you never have a year where you spend more than you take in, you’ll never have a debt. Ah, you were speaking in pure hypotheticals. ---
**Author:** ![Queen\_Bruin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Queen\_Bruin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Queen_Bruin)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/111 "2011-06-03T03:06:56Z")
75.76 %, currently 3 martinis into my evening and a law school dropout (halfway through 1L). Winning? ---
**Author:** ![Lamar\_Mundane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lamar\_Mundane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamar_Mundane)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/112 "2011-06-03T03:35:00Z")
I got 32 of 33. I missed the one about the Puritans. I answered that they fought for religious freedom, and I’m still not convinced that answer is wrong. ---
**Author:** ![installLSC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/54ee81/32.png) [@installLSC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/installLSC)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/113 "2011-06-03T03:39:51Z")
I got a 97%, only missing the question about taxes against spending. This wasn’t really a civics test, more an econ quiz with a few token political questions thrown in at the starts. Really, no questions about constitutional amendments outside the Bill of Rights? No questions about the powers or structures of state and local government? And why was one of the few political questions about abortion? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/114 "2011-06-03T03:40:21Z")
> [@Lamar\_Mundane](#): > > I got 32 of 33. I missed the one about the Puritans. I answered that they fought for religious freedom, and I’m still not convinced that answer is wrong. It is. The Puritans were opposed to religious freedom. They left England so they could form a one-religion society away from all of the other sects. ---
**Author:** ![whiterabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/cab0a1/32.png) [@whiterabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whiterabbit)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/115 "2011-06-03T03:58:05Z")
31/33, and the bias started to annoy me by the end. I flat-out guessed on a few of the economics ones but apparently I guess well according to the answers they are looking for. And yeah, the Puritans wanted religious freedom, but only for themselves. Something that wasn’t exactly emphasized in any history classes I ever took. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/116 "2011-06-03T04:47:28Z")
> [@Lamar\_Mundane](#): > > I got 32 of 33. I missed the one about the Puritans. I answered that they fought for religious freedom, and I’m still not convinced that answer is wrong. Ask Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams how the Puritans felt about religious freedom. The Puritans were, indeed, fleeing from religious persecution, but they didn’t want to set up some sort of religiously pluralist society. The notion of the Puritans as the early harbinger of American religious liberty is one of the enduring myths of American history. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/117 "2011-06-03T05:06:03Z")
> [@Lamar\_Mundane](#): > > I got 32 of 33. I missed the one about the Puritans. I answered that they fought for religious freedom, and I’m still not convinced that answer is wrong. I have no idea what it’s from but someone on this board quoted some story about an orthodox being asked why he felt persecuted and his response was something along the lines of “I have to see the Arians, and the Monophysites, and the Coptics walking around worshiping as they please? If that’s not persecution, I don’t know what is!” That was the puritanical viewpoint in a nutshell. I got 30 out of 33. I missed some of the economics ones. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/118 "2011-06-03T05:47:11Z")
The only one I missed was the one about the Lincoln-Douglass debates-- I guessed that they were about citizenship for blacks, because I remembered some snippets from Lincoln’s part of the debates on that subject. Slavery in the territories would have been my second guess, though. Obviously there’s something of a selection effect here, in that those who got low scores would be less likely to report them than those who got high scores, but it’s still remarkable that everyone’s doing so well-- I don’t think anyone’s reported a score under 70-something. Does this indicate that Dopers are unusually smart, or that the group that was used to generate those statistics is unusually dumb, or just that the selection effect is that extreme? ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/119 "2011-06-03T05:58:17Z")
I suspect the statistics were massaged so that people, in a fit of righteous indignation, would take the test so as to prove that they are not part of that fuckup group. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023/120 "2011-06-03T06:00:30Z")
I don’t think it’s a matter of “smart.” Knowing this stuff doesn’t require an incredibly high amount of intelligence. In fact, the notion that _everyone_ should know this stuff is at the heart of the test in the first place. It really depends on where your interests lie, what you have been taught, what you have chosen to investigate for yourself, and how important this sort of civics-related knowledge has been in your life. I teach US history, and personally i still don’t think it’s the end of the world if someone doesn’t know what the Puritans were all about, or that it was Jefferson who made the comment about a “wall of separation,” or even that FDR tried to stack the Supreme Court. For me, history and civics are more about learning how to think, how to analyze and make connections and draw conclusions, than about remembering who did what to whom and when. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-civics-test-how-well-can-you-do/584023.md?page=7)