Civics quiz

Big article in the Palm Beach Post today revealing that most college students can't answer basic questions about American government.

Students at 50 institutions of higher learning in the United States - including two in Florida - took the 60-question multiple choice test. They were asked questions such as, "The Constitution of the United States established what form of government?" (Hint: It's not an aristocracy).

The grades?

Harvard seniors fared best, with a mean score of 69.6 percent, compared with 63.6 percent for freshmen, ranking 17 out of 50 schools for the 6 percentage-point gain from freshman to senior year. Notre Dame freshmen scored 55.7 percent, and seniors there got 61.3 percent correct - for a ranking of 18.

University of Florida seniors were in the middle of the pack, at 53.4 percent. Florida freshmen who took the test scored 48.96 percent, for a mean score increase of 4.4 percentage points from freshman to senior year - earning them a ranking of 22 out of 50.

At St. Thomas University in Miami, the other Florida school surveyed, the mean score for freshmen was 29.7 percent - the worst of the 50 universities. But senior scores improved by 2.75 percentage points, ranking the school 34th for gains.

The best improvement? Eastern Connecticut State University, where students gained 9.7 percentage points from freshmen to senior year. The bad news is ECSU students started out with a mean score of 31 percent, among the lowest of all the schools.

The Ivy League schools - the crème de la crème of America's higher education system - fared the worst, from freshman to senior year.

"They didn't gain anything," [Dr. Richard Brake, director of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's Lehrman American Studies Center] says. "The worst ones were Cornell, which ranked 50th; Yale, 49th; Duke, 48th; Princeton, 46th."

"That's failing, no matter how you look at it," says Brake, a veteran teacher before he became director of the center.

Since I know you're waiting with bated breath to find out, this recovering attorney and former high school civics teacher scored 77%. I was fine with most of the pure American government questions, but I got tripped up on some political philosophy questions and downright hammered on economics questions.

However, I'm a little troubled by the wording of some of the questions. Especially in the economic realm, they seem to have a bit of a rightward lean. For example:

Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government's centralized planning because:

A. the price system utilizes more local knowledge of means and ends
B. markets rely upon coercion, whereas government relies upon voluntary compliance with the law
C. more tax revenue can be generated from free enterprise
D. property rights and contracts are best enforced by the market system
E. government planners are too cautious in spending taxpayers' money

Then again, maybe it's just my DFH perspective rearing its dirty, long-haired head again. You too can take the test and see for yourself.

Good luck!

UPDATE (1:55 pm 1/8/08): I suppose I could have done the research on this myself, but commenter RF helpfully confirms what I suspected all along:

The "Intercollegiate Studies Institute" that puts out the quiz is a conservative think tank. Their front page is all about "saving western civilization" - presumably from America's political left. It is fairly irresponsible of the Palm Beach Post to print this article promoting an agenda-driven parody of social science without noting that the institute that conducted the survey is explicitly ideologically motivated.

It would be nice if the Post would have revealed the right-wing bias in the test ... or if they had chosen a more ideologically neutral test. But, you know the "liberal" media ...