Friday, January 02, 2009

Are you smarter than the people you elected?

It shouldn't be difficult. The most recent annual report on Civic Literacy, released by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in November revealed an average score of F by both citizens and elected officials. I'm not surprised. Remember the election video where Obama's supporters said it was OK for him to be running with Sarah Palin and thought she'd do a good job?

"More than 2,500 randomly selected Americans took the test on Civic Literacy, and more than 1,700 of them failed. The average score was a 49%. More shocking, the average score of elected officials was 44%, meaning that our public officials performed worse than citizens selected at random. Less than 1% of those surveyed (21 of 2,508) earned an A on the test (90% or higher)." I scored 78.79 %, which isn't all that great, but apparently better than the folks I elected. When I looked at the ones I missed, there were two I just didn't read carefully, and the others I guessed (wrong). But bad either way.

Take a stab.

5 comments:

Deb said...

81.82%, which is 27 out of 33.

Norma said...

You are my hero librarian.

Anonymous said...

Murray sez:
In an attempt to keep your reader's averages down I took the test and scored 70%.

Norma said...

You are my hero too--smarter than an elected official.

Anonymous said...

Murray sez:
You have it all wrong Norma. Our elected officials are smart. Their goals are simple. Get re-elected. They accomplish this year after year. It b us dat's stupid!