Smarter than a Harvard Senior?

[matgb]

Um, I don't know how to react to this. paulatpingu asks So how much do you know about American civic history?

On this quiz I scored 66%, which would place me in one of the top three American Universities when the same quiz was carried out there. Basically, even though I know very little about the specifics of US history, my general knowledge on the subject is better than most American college students.

The quiz itself is here at American Civic Literacy, my result?

You answered 47 out of 60 correctly — 78.33 %

Now, admittedly, some of the questions are about political theorists (Plato and Locke, for example), which both of us studied as undergrads. But, um, it's mostly about United States history and governance. From the breakdown of results by US college (they tested students in the Senior year):

1. Harvard University 69.56%

I, a Brit, score better in a test of US history, than the average senior at Harvard, the premier US university? And despite temptation, no googling, no look ups, just general knowledge and educated guesses.

I know there are smart, capable, switched on USians out there--a chunk of them are on my friends list. But seriously, if even the most educated know so little about their own history and system of government...

My brain hurts. Take the test, can you beat a Harvard senior?

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Catching up, thanks for all the supportive comments during my travels yesterday, brain is now slowly waking back up

Comments

[baseballchica03.livejournal.com]

I'm TAing the intro to American government and politics class this semester. I had to cancel my recitations last week because of Rosh Hashana, so I assigned the students to e-mail me either questions or what they thought was a key point from the chapter. One of my students asked why the Americans were subject to British rule if they weren't in England.

Um... what? How do you get to be 18 years old - educated in a former colony, no less - and not understand what a colony is?

I got 54/60 = 90%, which is not so bad considering that I haven't taken economics since high school and I haven't done political theory in a good eight years. (That's where I missed all of my questions.)

[matgb]

My brain hurts again. I'm guessing the same person would be utterly bemused at the constitutional position of places like Puerto Rico as well. I expected you and caseytalk to score best, but it turns out you've been beaten by a Brit. Not by much though--95%.

[baseballchica03.livejournal.com]

From the questions, I'm surprised I did as well as I did. I had a very area studies kind of undergrad experience and empirical grad student experience. Not very much theory, and all but one of my missed questions are from that section. I don't think I've ever even read deTocqueville, and I'm pretty sure I didn't even crack Plato when it was actually assigned. :-p