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The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation reports:
Just a third of Americans can pass a multiple choice "U.S. Citizenship Test", fumbling over such simple questions as the cause of the cold war or naming just one thing Benjamin Franklin is famous for.
And of Americans 45 and younger, the passing rate is a tiny 19 percent, according to a survey done for the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.
Worse: The actual test only requires that 60 percent of the answers be correct. In the survey, just 36 percent passed.
Among the embarrassing errors uncovered in the survey of questions taken from the U.S. Citizenship Test and conducted by Lincoln Park Stragtegies:
- 72 percent of respondents either incorrectly identified or were unsure of which states were part of the 13 original states.
- 24 percent could correctly identify one thing Benjamin Franklin was famous for, with 37 percent believing he invented the lightbulb.
- 12 percent incorrectly thought WWII General Dwight Eisenhower led troops in the Civil War.
- 2 percent said the Cold War was caused by climate change.
Also at Sputnik and The Tri-City Herald
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1-in-3 Pass `US Citizenship Test,' Just 19% for Americans 45 and Younger
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< nobse> bleh... last night I had a dream... someone NMU'ed vim...
nightmare
-- in #debian-devel
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday October 04 2018, @09:36PM (13 children)
I haven't thought of the 13 original states since Jr High school, some 50 years ago. You'll have to forgive me for forgetting them, I had to free up some brain cells for Brady Bunch trivia, which is a lot more useful in today's society.
Then again, who the hell thought Ben invented the light bulb, or Eisenhower was in the civil war? As a previous poster said, these survey respondents must be the same folks that fall for spam.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @10:57PM (1 child)
I thought the summary was clear. 81% of millennials believe that Benjamin Franklin invented the lightbulb, that Dwight Eisenhower beat Lincoln at Gettysburg, and that Ruby on Rails is a useful programming tool. And you wonder why companies want to hire H1Bs.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @01:07AM
No, every millennial knows that Edison stole the light bulb and all of his patents from Tesla then used profits from his corporation to hide free wireless energy from the world.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @12:00AM (2 children)
I remember well, back in the 70s, that the only test I ever cheated on in school was one where we were supposed to memorize the 50 state capitals. Even in fifth grade, I was thinking that it was a waste of everyone's time, and that I'd never need to know what the capital of any state I wasn't actually in was. Forty years later, I have yet to be proven wrong in this assessment.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 05 2018, @01:09AM (1 child)
Oooh, I needed to know it once, last summer. The kids wanted to do a giant jigsaw puzzle of the United States that did diabolical stuff like making New York the same color as Indiana and that kind of thing. The way to know the pink pieces belonged to Indiana and not New York was to know what the capital of Indiana was and vice versa.
So there you have it. All that effort was so that one day you can help your kids go a jigsaw puzzle of the United States.
But it could have been worse. You should check out what the poor bastards in Japan have to learn in school. They're expected to memorize and reproduce on college entrance exams what the parts of a ginger root are called, vs. the parts of a lotus root. It is the most extreme form of stupid minutiae I have ever seen or heard of.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @04:48AM
That attention to detail has lead to a lot of manga, light novels, and anime delving into detailed explorations of both domestic and foreign myths, stories, legends, sci-fi, and fact. The way Japan is contracting, and getting bought up by foreign investors, slowly globalizing the majority of its culture, I feel sad at the loss of what japan was capable of becoming post-WW2 (or Pre-Opening, since the full ramifications of that are what lead to Japan's participation in WW1 and 2 as an industrialized nation.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @02:12AM (7 children)
Problem is that those very folks are the opinionated ones. Look at some of the late night talkshow hosts when they go asking in the street about issues. Oh yes, South Burundi is a credible threat to USA security, we should really bomb them... oh, where on the map ... here? No, that's Canada. And enough of these morons scream and someone else's country is f*cked thanks to USAian policy. And you wonder why some chant what they chant and burn the flag. There should be an IQ test to vote (all countries).
(Score: 1) by r_a_trip on Friday October 05 2018, @09:00AM (6 children)
That kills democracy instantly. You'd have a fairly small elite installing a "council" of their most admired brethren. Ideals aside, I'm not convinced it would be worse than what we have now.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday October 05 2018, @11:53AM
You've just described what we have now, pre-Trump?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday October 05 2018, @01:01PM (2 children)
I like Heinlein's idea. Anyone can vote. You walk into a booth, solve a simple quadratic equation, it gives you a ballot paper, and you make your choices.
If you fail to solve the equation, a trapdoor in the floor opens and you are never heard from again.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @05:52PM (1 child)
Can you open the trapdoor yourself, if the choices on the ballot drive you to despair?
(Score: 1) by r_a_trip on Monday October 08 2018, @02:11PM
Yes, fail the equation.
(Score: 1) by ChrisMaple on Saturday October 06 2018, @02:22AM (1 child)
Although an IQ test to be eligible to vote is a bad idea, the claim "That kills democracy instantly" is false. The IQ test to vote idea does little damage; it causes a problem only if the cutoff is too high. The goal is to keep the truly stupid from voting, this can be achieved with a cutoff of 70 or thereabouts.
More than lack of intelligence, ignorance and belief in the patently false causes bad results at the ballot box. Trying to remove that via a test immediately gets into the territory of political opinion, and having the government test for political opinion is an open invitation to tyranny. There's no easy solution.
(Score: 1) by r_a_trip on Monday October 08 2018, @02:50PM
You think the problem lies with the group that has an IQ of 70 or lower? Most problems are cause by the average range of 85 to 115, simply because 68% of the population falls in this category. This is the group large enough to determine election outcome. When you say that ignorance is the killer, it is clear that an IQ between 85 and 115 isn't high enough to make informing oneself before making non-trivial decisions a default thing.