I got 90.91% right. I’ll share the three I missed in the comments. Shamefully:
The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%. Can you do better? Questions were drawn from past ISI surveys, as well as other nationally recognized exams.
I would say I learned the answers to almost of these via my own reading after college, not from anything I was told in high school or college, with one or two exceptions. I did learn the three branches of government in high school.
How did you do? It’s very telling how low the scores of college educators are, isn’t it?
(Link fixed)
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I missed these three:
Question: Which of the following fiscal policy combinations has the federal government most often followed to stimulate economic activity when the economy is in a severe recession?
Correct Answer: decreasing taxes and increasing spending
Question: A flood-control levee (or National Defense) is considered a public good because:
Correct Answer: a resident can benefit from it without directly paying for it
Question: If taxes equal government spending, then:
Correct Answer: tax per person equals government spending per person on average
Unless I’m just not seeing it, I think the link to the test is missing.
Thanks, fixed it.
It won’t let me get past the first page of questions….
Wow, we missed the same two of three. I could easily have missed the first one you have because I wasn’t at all sure I knew which one had been most often used.
I took the test and got a 90.91% as well. I learned most of the answers in college, but I majored in history and political science (with a subfocus in American political history), so it would be especially bad if I had done poorly on the test.
I missed two of the same ones you did:
Q: Which of the following fiscal policy combinations has the federal government most often followed to stimulate economic activity when the economy is in a severe recession?
Q: If taxes equal government spending, then:
[I misunderstood this question to mean that if revenue = expenditures, then there'd be no debt]
Plus, I also missed:
Q: International trade and specialization most often lead to which of the following?
A: An increase in a nation’s productivity
I missed four, two being ones you missed (the tax questions). I also missed the one about FDR’s response to his New Deal being declared unconstitutional, and the fourth had to do with international trade.
I’m a college graduate, but my real education has only been happening since I started homeschooling. Since my oldest is studying AO Year 8, I’m going to plead ignorance on the New Deal question because we’re not there yet in history . Economics has been a tough subject for me, even with great resources.
I only missed the last one, where I said If taxes equal government spending, then government debt is zero. I’m still not sure why that’s not true, unless it assumes that government spending exceeded taxes sometimes in the past in order to create the debt.
I got an 89%. I had a great gov and Economics teacher in 10th grade and I learned a lot from him. But I have to say, most of what I knew came from personal interest and paying attention to what is going on in the world.
I missed four, two of the ones that you missed and two others. Interesting test
.
Phooey. Missed the very last question because I was hollering at the kids to go to bed. (That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.) 96.97%
Sigh, I only got 72.73%. BUT in my defense I’m pretty confident that I would have gotten a couple more right if I weren’t so tired(for example I really do know how business profits are calculated
stupid question to get wrong!)
I got 72.73% and I’m Canadian! I missed the ones you missed plus a few others mostly related to US gov’t.
I missed one; I misread “anti-federalists” as “federalists”. Score one for civics and take a point from reading comprehension, I guess. : /
I took the test for fun (I’m Northern Irish born and bred and have never lived in America) and I got
63.64 % !!! So how did I beat the average college professor ? I didn’t answer randomly either.
The idea that our colleges are staffed by those who are seemingly there to share their ignorance is disturbing.
Hi, I took the test. I’m Australian and really haven’t studied American history. I was quite intrigued to see how I would go. Admittedly, a lot of guess work went on, but to my surprise I got 84.85% – 5 questions wong -2 of them the same as you. I think it’s really interesting how much non-Americans know about your country. It shows the incredible influence of your media/entertainment industry. I think it possibly shows that some countries are less ethnocentric than others. I think. I do remember on my one trip to the US, that I was quite surprised by how little people knew of my country whereas I certainly knew the basics of theirs.
I wonder why the influence of our media/entertainment industry enabled you to learn so much about American civics, but seems to have almost no influence on Americans at all, since even college educators got a much lower score than you (average 55%)
Good point!! Your elections and government processes are covered here in some detail and I think that’s why I was able to recall/guess many of the answers. The questions regarding Lincoln and Jefferson etc are more a general knowledge thing. As allies with the US, we also have war issues (and the due process in going to war etc) reported here. If I can pick this up from the media in another country, then it’s really surprising that college educators in the US are not scoring higher on this test.
That’s why I don’t think is about ethnocentrism at all, although that is the easy stereotype to make. For this to be proof of American ethnocentrism, Americans would have to score higher.
Americans may not know much about your country, but they don’t much about theirs, either.