Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

No one could have predicted…

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

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Reader Interactions

191Comments

  4. 4.

    gwangung

    And this is the area of the country where they want to dumb down the Civics part of schooling like they did the science part…

  6. 6.

    asiangrrlMN

    By the way, I want this questionnaire given to every OK adult to see how they would do.

    On the other hand, I was surprised that only 3% answered that the the Ten Amendments to the Constitution are called The Ten Commandments.

    Maybe there’s hope yet!

  7. 7.

    Midnight Marauder

    The graphs on the TrueSlant page that contain the most popular answers for each question are truly astonishing in how much epic fail they represent.

    What Is The Supreme Law of The Land?

    4% said the Gettysburg Address
    3% said the Monroe Doctrine

    Wow. Just wow.

    What Do We Call The First Ten Amendments To The Constitution?

    6% said the Gettysburg Address (are you fucking kidding me?)
    4% said the Monroe Doctrine
    3% said The Ten Commandments (now that is truly stunning)
    2% said The New Deal (I LOLed)

    11% think the two major political parties in this country are “Communists and Republicans.”

    Also, I wish that I could somehow buy stock in “I Don’t Know.” That sure seems might popular with kids these days.

  9. 9.

    joes527

    1) The Ten Commandments
    2) Doesn’t matter. The only amendment that counts is the 2nd
    3) Cowards and scoundrels
    4) None. You can’t count legislating from the bench as “justice”
    5) God
    6) Questions about areas beyond the borders of the US of fuckin A will be ignored
    7) God fearing Republicans and Godless Socialists
    8) Senators are elected for life.
    9) Jefferson Davis
    10) A Kenyan

    What do I win?

  11. 11.

    Leelee for Obama

    Also, I wish that I could somehow buy stock in “I Don’t Know.” That sure seems might popular with kids these days.

    Almost as popular as I don’t recall. Surprised that wasn’t used more. Is it just a Texas Judge thing?

  12. 12.

    Bubblegum Tate

    Don’t you see that this proves that public schools are LIEbrul failures? And teacher’s unions. Also.

  13. 13.

    Midnight Marauder

    @John PM:

    “In the land of the dumb, the person with 7 correct answers is king.”

    And I wouldn’t be surprised if those 6 kids who somehow managed to get 7/10 are considered the DFHs of their communities, and taunted on a regular basis. In the words of Chris Rock:

    Oh, you got your Masters now? So what that mean? You my master, huh? You my master now? Fuck you, you smarty art motherfucker

  14. 14.

    Napoleon

    Jesus, I would have got all 10 of them and on top of it I bet I could have named nearly every state capital.

  16. 16.

    Shell

    Phew. Glad they nailed that ‘Atlantic Ocean’ question/

    But seriously, what’s with the Monroe Doctrine popping up twice. Does it have some extra significance in Oklahoma?

  17. 17.

    jrg

    The constitution doesn’t say that Oklahoma high-school students have to take civics tests, you communist bastards.

    …WOLVERINES!

  21. 21.

    Peter J

    Am I the only one objecting to “What are the two major political parties in the United States? Democrat and Republican”?

    How about using Democratic instead?

    Who are the Oklahoma council of Public Affairs, and why are they using Republican slurs?

  22. 22.

    JoshA

    The two largest political parties are the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. I’m unaware of the existence of a “Democrat Party.”

  24. 24.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Actually if they had just applied MalkinMath to the metro cars like they did to the crowds, there would have been 30 times more trains, plenty to go around.

    Foolish Earthlings. Just need to apply your fantasies evenly, in all dimensions at once.

  25. 25.

    Brachiator

    What Is The Supreme Law of The Land?

    I’m pretty sure it’s “Stop, In the Name of Love.”

    But seriously, how can you expect our children to be learning when their parents are busy pulling them out of school so that they won’t be indoctrinated by Scary Terrorist Muslim President?

    OK, so that wasn’t serious.

    But seriously. Also, too.

  26. 26.

    Gaucho Politico

    arent we discounting the fact that maybe they didnt take this seriously? these are high school students after all so the chance that they really cared about a random 10 question civics test is zero. the fact that none of them answered more than 7 correctly is sad. I bet there was also some intentional missing of questions as some thought obama wrote the deceleration of independence.

  27. 27.

    BombIranForChrist

    I didn’t know the Supreme Court one without actually running through the justices in my head. But the fact that I can do that probably saves me from complete idiocy. I hope.

  32. 32.

    Comrade Mary

    .. but then again, a fair number of those kids just Did Not Care or wrote obviously wrong answers.

  33. 33.

    ppcli

    I suppose it is pointless to observe that there are *not* two parties called “Democrat” (ahem) and Republican. You would think that school test writers might suspend their allegiance to Rovian style guidelines for the sake of using the actual goddamned name of the party.

  34. 34.

    jl

    @Peter J: The news clip said that a conservative think tank ran the project and administered the test. That probably explains the answers to the question on the two major parties.

    So, we do not have to worry just about ‘Is our children learning?’ but also ‘Who is the teachers?”

    Which reminds me, hearings on the new GOP Texas civics text book proposals started a day or so ago.

    And tooyou OK bashers out there, the clip said that AZ students turned in a similar performance.

  36. 36.

    valdivia

    hey I memorized all 100 when I became a citizen so does this make me not a real amurican? will the reps take my passport away because I know too much?

  37. 37.

    JK

    Jay Leno needs to hop a flight to Oklahoma for a special week of jaywalking with Oklahoma school students.

  38. 38.

    Drosophila Slayer

    This is hard for me to believe. I mean, I grew up in rural Missouri, and there were some pretty stupendous dumbasses that I went to school with, but there were also some very bright, very attentive kids, too.So it’s hard for me to believe that not a single student out of 1000 got all 10 right (or even 8 right). Unfathomable.

  39. 39.

    Calouste

    Obviously all these poor kids thought this was a trick questionnaire because they didn’t include the right answer to the question who was the first President of the USA, Ronald Reagan.

    And of course that possibility was also missing from at least 5 other questions, including the one that uses the old commieislamoeurofascist name of “atlantic ocean” for the Glorious Ronald Reagan Ocean.

  41. 41.

    Midnight Marauder

    Lest we forget these other gems:

    3% answered The Emancipation Proclamation to “What Is The Supreme Law of The Land?

    8% answered “President and Congress” to What Are The Two Parts of The US Congress?

    Let that sink in. One of their answers for the parts of Congress was…Congress. (I hereby propose that “Oklahoma Fail” be added to the pantheon of Epic Fail, to designate those occasions when the fail is truly grand in its reflection of ignorance run amok.)

    24% answered Abraham Lincoln to Who Wrote The Declaration of Independence? I mean, do they have not even the slightest concept of American history? At all? Are they that devoid of knowledge about the evolution of this country?

    10% answered The Governor to Who Is In Charge of The Executive Branch?

    10% also answered Franklin Roosevelt to Who Was The First President of The United States?

    The stupid…it burns.

  42. 42.

    JHF

    Jesus, if I don’t go out and climb a mountain tomorrow instead of reading blogs, just fucking shoot me. It’s really dangerous to care beyond the boundaries of what my own poor eyes can see, and I *don’t* mean words on a page…

    But thank you for this message just the same, John. It reminds me of my own wonderful experiences in West Texas and (occasionally) Oklahoma. There used to be so-designated “Scenic Turnoff” on I-35 in the so-called Arbuckle “Mountains” that was always worth a stop, because of nothing whatsoever being there, scenic or no. It always blew my mind, that highway department koan. Perhaps it still pulls people off the road and sends them on their way, appropriately shattered.

  43. 43.

    joes527

    @Gaucho Politico: Probably very true. Still you have to believe that at least some of the students were trying. And even amongst the suck up students who do their best on pointless tests, no one got better than 7 out of 10.

    Even the teachers’ pets are stupid.

  45. 45.

    Andrew

    Does anyone know how they selected the students? I know most of the students I hung out with in High School would have had no problem with this test.

  48. 48.

    Legalize

    That michelemalkinmath thingy might be win the internets for the year. And of course this year is 20,009.

  49. 49.

    bedtimeforbonzo

    At first blush, yes, this seems surprising.

    But the dumbing-down of America has been on full display for years on all those “Jay Walking” segments Leno does, which makes good-natured fun of adult stupidity.

    P.S. That’s about the only thing I found amusing on Leno’s “Tonight Show.” I tuned in to his 10 p.m. show on Monday out of curiosity and came away unimpressed with its slapped-together quality. NBC lost its pride — and all of its good scripted dramas.

  51. 51.

    Shawn in ShowMe

    Obviously Malkin takes the theological construct “A Day to God is Like 1000 Years to Man” very seriously. We’re all Methusalites now.

  52. 52.

    zzyzx

    I could see getting, “What Is The Supreme Law of The Land?” wrong just because I don’t really use that phrasing much so I could get confused or think they wanted something else.

  54. 54.

    Tsulagi

    Idiocracy…not just a movie.

    I’m guessing if they were asked to name a popular dick pill those scores would have been significantly higher.

  56. 56.

    Emma Anne

    I actually checked on Snopes, because I really can’t believe these results are for real. Maybe it just isn’t up yet.

  57. 57.

    Midnight Marauder

    @zzyzx:

    I could see getting, “What Is The Supreme Law of The Land?” wrong just because I don’t really use that phrasing much so I could get confused or think they wanted something else.

    Really? Even if you were choosing between The Constitution, The Emancipation Proclamation, The Monroe Doctrine, and The Gettysburg Address?

    Oh, and of course, the perennial favorite, “I Don’t Know.”

  58. 58.

    joes527

    @zzyzx:

    I could see getting, “What Is The Supreme Law of The Land?” wrong just because I don’t really use that phrasing much so I could get confused or think they wanted something else.

    Obey your thirst?

  59. 59.

    stevie314159

    The really correct answers:

    1. THE AK-47
    2. 2 out of 10 ain’t bad (2nd, 10th).
    3. The Wolverines and the Arugulas
    4. One too few (Bork)
    5. Wolverines.
    6. The French & English Pussy Ocean
    7. Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity
    8. Til they have sex in a bathroom stall.
    9. Dick Cheney
    10. Dick Cheney

  61. 61.

    Max

    I love the Twitter thread. Twitter is my new favorite thing (besides here).

    I’d love to know some interesting people that other BJ’ers follow.

    Right now for those on Twitter, Jake Tapper and David Corn are having a swabble over how Jake phrased a question in the daily briefing. Jake was concerned that President McCain’s feelings were hurt by the decision to redefine the missle shield against his demands.

    And Chuckie T’s Tweets are as lame as he is and as speculative as all get out.

  62. 62.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    @Peter J:

    Here’s the link to the OCPA page from True/Slant, where they sort of explain the methodology:

    Ten questions, chosen at random, were drawn from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) item bank, which consists of 100 questions given to candidates for United States citizenship. The longstanding practice has been for candidates for citizenship to take a test on 10 of these items.4 A minimum of six correct answers is required to pass. Recently, the USCIS had 6,000 citizenship applicants pilot a newer version of this test. The agency reported a 92.4 percent passing rate among citizenship applicants on the first try.5
    …
    In Oklahoma, the telephone surveyors called a sample of 1,000 public high-school students and read the following statement: “On the next 10 questions, I will be asking you questions about American government and history. Give me your best answer, and it is permissible to respond ‘I don’t know.'”

    If I’m reading that correctly, the students weren’t given a list of choices that included “Democrat”; that’s what those students thought the Democratic party was called.

    Which makes it wild that 40 students thought the first 10 amendments to the Constitution were called The Monroe Doctrine. I can see one or two making that leap, but 40?

  63. 63.

    DFS.

    Think of the fringe benefits to banging Michelle Malkin. She’d tell all her friends that your cock’s 16 feet long and you got her off 33 times in one night.

  64. 64.

    General Winfield Stuck

    You left out the best/worst part .

    A death row prisoner was driven to trying to insert lethal injection needles into his own arms after executioners spent more than two hours failing to find suitable veins. Romell Broom was seen sobbing as executioners at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in the United States repeatedly botched attempts to attach the IV tubes that deliver three lethal chemicals into the blood stream.

  65. 65.

    Skalite

    Democratic! It’s the Democratic party.

    Even the test got that one wrong, so only 9 out of 10 should count.

  66. 66.

    Mark S.

    2% answered that Michael Jackson wrote the Declaration of Independence. I think there was a significant percentage who were taking this test as a joke.

  69. 69.

    jrg

    “I could see getting, “What Is The Supreme Law of The Land?” wrong just because I don’t really use that phrasing much so I could get confused or think they wanted something else.”

    I’ll take “Jesus” for 2.5 million, Alex.

  70. 70.

    Dave C

    Based on the post title, I thought there was going to be a question about molecular biology or chemistry. But no. I feel cheated!

  71. 71.

    Zifnab

    @Midnight Marauder: Yeah, it was the IDK answers that were really stunning. These kids didn’t even try. It was just assumed they didn’t know this stuff.

    No wonder you’ve got people screaming, “Get Government out of my Medicare!” I question if they even know the definition of five out of six of the words in that sentence.

  74. 74.

    BFR

    10% answered The Governor to Who Is In Charge of The Executive Branch?

    This answer is correct. It doesn’t specify which Executive branch, so technically mayor would be correct too.

  76. 76.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    I don’t see the problem, the largest group of students got 2,800% on that test. Seems pretty smart to me.

  77. 77.

    Midnight Marauder

    @Grumpy Code Monkey:

    Which makes it wild that 40 students thought the first 10 amendments to the Constitution were called The Monroe Doctrine. I can see one or two making that leap, but 40?

    Seriously. I thought it was just one of those standard issue multiple choice kind of things, but again, if I read that correctly, there’s a healthy number of Oklahoma students who think the Monroe Doctrine is The Constitution and The Bill of Rights.

    All rolled into one super delicious package of patriotism and awesome.

    And who were the 30 or so kids that answered The Emancipation Proclamation to the “Supreme Law of The Land” question?

  78. 78.

    Drosophila Slayer

    Well, here is what I meant to quote:

    “This study is deeply flawed–perhaps intentionally so–and I think I can prove it to you.

    I spent some time looking over the actual study results (mainly the graphs at bottom with responses, but skimmed the text as well). These are some observations that make me doubt the validity of the study (besides the absurdly poor results on specific questions):

    * Keep in mind it’s an open-answer format (not multiple choice). Nevertheless, for every single question, the results listed add up to 100% exactly–with no “Other” category listed as a catch-all for rarer responses. Most of the questions have only 3-6 different responses listed (besides “Don’t Know”). This is strange in and of itself, and becomes more troubling when you look at some of the particular questions and sets of responses, such as:
    * Question 8: We elect a U.S. Senator for how many years? Responses: Ten – 33%, Four – 17%, Six – 11%, Two – 5%, Don’t Know – 34%. You’re telling me that out of 1000 people, 55% guessed the wrong number (10, 4, or 2), and EVERYONE who guessed the wrong number guessed one of these three numbers? Not enough people guessed, say, 5, or 8, or 1, to even register at all, but 55% guessed from among those 3 numbers? (Similarly, on the number of Supreme Court Justices question, the only responses were 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, or 12. Why did some people think 5, but nobody thought 7, or 11?)
    * Look at Question 1: What is the Supreme Law of the Land? Responses: The Constitution (26), Declaration of Independence (17), Bill of Rights (5), Gettysburg Address (4), Emancipation Proclamation (3), Monroe Doctrine (2). Now note a couple responses not listed: “Congress,” “The President.” You’re telling me almost 10% of students said “The Gettysburg Address” or “Emancipation Proclamation” or “Monroe Doctrine” but not 1% thought “Congress” is the Supreme Law of the Land? All of the listed responses are important political documents one encounters in U.S. Civics/History–the kinds of thing a semi-intelligent person might MAKE UP as wrong answers to this question…
    * Or look at Question 7: What are the two major political parties? We have: Democrat and Republican (43), Communist and Republican (11), and Don’t Know (46). So 11% of these conservative students thought of the funny joke answer Communist and Republican, but NOBODY listed the variant “Socialist and Republican”? (And no left-leaning student thought of “Democrat and Fascist”?)
    * Also, in response to Question 3, What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress, people thought to give wrong answers like “President and Congress” (!), “President and Supreme Court,” or “Governor and President” (weird right??), but NOBODY gave the answer “Democrats and Republicans”?
    * And speaking of Question 8 (Who was the First President of the United States?), 23% gave the correct answer (George Washington), and only 10% said “Don’t Know.” The remaining EIGHT responses–arranged in a nice, linearly decreasing frequency–were split among eight DIFFERENT U.S. Presidents, including Nixon, JFK, GWB, and Obama. Really?
    * The pattern is the same for all the questions/responses (you can look at the other few I didn’t analyze here yourself): Incorrect responses always come from a basic U.S. Civics/History repertoire of things in the same basic category as the right answer (excluding a couple joke answers). They look more like the incorrect responses you might expect to see the maker of a multiple-choice exam put in–but these are supposedly what students offered up on their own, and the ONLY answers students offered up on their own.
    * Of 1000 students, only six of them answered 7 questions correctly, and none answered 8 or more correctly. These questions are not especially difficult civics questions, yet the results suggest that out of 1000 respondents, not one student was found who was bright/knowledgeable enough to get 8/10 or more right.
    * The text introducing and analyzing the survey results is written in a clearly polemical–as opposed to academic–tone. The group that commissioned this survey very probably wanted students to do poorly, because this calls attention to them and their cause (improving civics education).

    I lived in Oklahoma through college (and heaven knows it’s got its problems), but you don’t have to have lived there to recognize that the purported results of this study are absurd on their face.

    tl;dr – Various details of the study’s results are highly suspicious, leading me personally to think they were intentionally doctored if not made up out of whole cloth.”

  79. 79.

    zzyzx

    @Midnight Marauder: “Really? Even if you were choosing between The Constitution, The Emancipation Proclamation, The Monroe Doctrine, and The Gettysburg Address?”

    If I were given that in a multiple choice, I’d know the right answer, obviously, but I could see answering, “I don’t know,” just because I’d be unsure what the question was getting at.

  80. 80.

    srv

    If I were a Democrat in Congress, I would immediately submit a bill requiring all voters to pass a citizenship test.

    Win Win.

  82. 82.

    Warren Terra

    As has been repeatedly noted, the second table – the inability to find one remotely knowledgeable kid from 1,000 – is terrifying. The comment by John PM was pure win:

    “In the land of the dumb, the person with 7/10 answers correct is king.”

    (I slightly rephrased the comment, because I’m like that, but the original conception of the comment was fantastic).

  84. 84.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @BFR:

    10% answered The Governor to Who Is In Charge of The Executive Branch?

    Is that what Mark Sanford is calling it these days?

  86. 86.

    Legalize

    To be fair, there are at least 1.7 million amendments to the Bible. I can’t imagine that any high school student has read all of them.

  87. 87.

    joes527

    @Mark S.:

    Assume that half of the kids didn’t take it seriously.

    Then assume that ALL the lowest scores are for the kids who were joking around.

    The remaining scores still range from 3 – 7 with the most common score being 3.

    OK. That doesn’t help much, so let’s assume that 3/4 of the kids were joking around, and that all of the lowest scores are jokes

    The remaining scores still range from 4 – 7 with the most common score being 4.

    OK. That doesn’t help much…

  88. 88.

    geg6

    That would explain why the only two states in US from which we’ve never had a student here on my campus are Alaska and Oklahoma. I know that AK has a lot of very low income people and a ridiculously small population, so we may never get an Alaskan here. But we had some hopes for OK. After seeing, this? Not so much. I don’t think the best of that bunch could get accepted here.

  89. 89.

    Midnight Marauder

    @BFR:

    This answer is correct. It doesn’t specify which Executive branch, so technically mayor would be correct too.

    Technically, yes, it is correct. However, every single question in the test was about US Civics, and the federal government in particular. So in this context, mayor would not be correct. The question was about the Executive branch of the federal government.

    These kids get no slack, even if some were taking it as a joke. I mean, sure, that always happens with these things. But if you know the answer, why wouldn’t you just volunteer it?

    Unless you think the 24% who answered Abraham Lincoln to “Who Wrote The Declaration of Independence” were all just kidding around.

  90. 90.

    AB

    1. The OLC, if a Republican is President.
    2. The right to bear arms and shoot people as free speech.
    3. The Republican Majority and the Capitulating Democrats.
    4. Currently, four. The rest are “injustices”.
    5. Rick Perry.
    6. This is a tough one to spoof. I’m going to go with “The East American Ocean”.
    7. The corporate party and the batshit crazy party.
    8. As long as they want to serve, unless they had gay sex.
    9. Ronald Reagan. The rest just wasn’t America.
    10. Dirty communist hippie liberal fascist nazi abortionist blogger dungeons and dragons player nerd Kenyan born out of the United States illegal immigrant communist black guy.

    Also, too.

  92. 92.

    Jacob Davies

    “If I’m reading that correctly, the students weren’t given a list of choices that included “Democrat”; that’s what those students thought the Democratic party was called.”

    I seriously doubt that. The answers that were given would vary a lot more than that and would be coded into categories supplied by the pollster.

    I am pretty dubious about the whole thing – 11% of high school students volunteered, unprompted, that they thought the Communist party was one of the two main parties in the US? Really? I don’t think so. The whole thing stinks of conservative “public schools suck” propaganda.

  93. 93.

    Peter J

    @Grumpy Code Monkey:

    If I’m reading that correctly, the students weren’t given a list of choices that included “Democrat”; that’s what those students thought the Democratic party was called.

    I’m guessing that the OCPA put all answers like ‘Democratic’, ‘Democrat’, ‘Democrats’, ‘Democratic Party’ together under ‘Democrat’.

    Which makes it wild that 40 students thought the first 10 amendments to the Constitution were called The Monroe Doctrine. I can see one or two making that leap, but 40?

    Unless some questions where multiple choice and some weren’t. How many students who know the name John Adams, wouldn’t know that George Washington was the first president?

    But on the other hand, 2% answered that Michael Jackson wrote the Constitution.

    Weird.

  94. 94.

    Legalize

    I just found a copy of Dan Riehl’s answers to the same test:

    1. Purple

    2. Banana

    3. Time Warner Cable

    4. Raul Ibanez

    5. Technical Thug

    6. ??

    7. Profit

    8. LOLz

    9. Ronald Reagan

    10. Gabba Gabba Hey!

    Not bad

  95. 95.

    Comrade Kevin

    Mr. Hand: I like that. ‘I Don’t Know.’ That’s nice.

    Mr. Hand: ‘Mr. Hand, will I pass this class?’ Gee, Mr. Spicoli, I don’t know! You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to leave your words right up here for all my classes to enjoy, giving you full credit of course, Mr. Spicoli.

    Jeff Spicoli: All right!

  96. 96.

    Warren Terra

    Oh, and from the expanded details, for three of ten questions the correct answer was neither the first or second most popular choice (not counting “don’t know”).

    And, has been pointed out above, one of the questions was really weird:

    Figure 7: Oklahoma Public High-School Students’ Answers to the Question “What Are the Two Major Political Parties in the United States?”
    43% Democrat and Republican
    11% Communist and Republican
    46% Don’t Know

    Now, I don’t know what the other options were – but I’d guess that there were a couple of other options, because the other questions had more than two answers. Of course, there is, to my knowledge, no “Democrat” party (and at least one sample Citizenship Test site gives the correct answer in the form “Democratic”, not “Democrat”). And the fact that the rest of the kids went straight to “Communist” is just deeply revealing.

  99. 99.

    Midnight Marauder

    @zzyzx:

    If I were given that in a multiple choice, I’d know the right answer, obviously, but I could see answering, “I don’t know,” just because I’d be unsure what the question was getting at.

    Yeah, I could see that. I just find it surprising because even in the half-assed civics class I had in high school (and, in fact, I feel like well before then), I’ve always heard the Constitution referenced as either “The Highest Law In The Land” or “The Supreme Law of The Land.” And that was growing up in TEXAS!

    Either way, though, I think most people can put the dots together between The Supreme Law of the Land and The Constitution.

    I have faith that you are one of these people.

  100. 100.

    Derelict

    I liked (not) the newcaster’s excuse that “unlike those taking the citizenship test, the student’s did not have time to study for these specific questions.”

    Yep, I’m sure Mr. Stuffedsuit in front of the camera thought these questions were really Really REALLY hard. It’s just downright unreasonable to expect anyone to have a basic grasp of their own country without studying for the specific questions.

  103. 103.

    Comrade Kevin

    What Jefferson was saying was, Hey! You know, we left this England place ’cause it was bogus; so if we don’t get some cool rules ourselves – pronto – we’ll just be bogus too! Get it?

  104. 104.

    ronin122

    @Peter J: Guess that explains why they wrote “democrat” and communist but nothing else for the political parties besides Republican. Which leads me to two simultaneous conclusions: Oklahoma folk don’t know shit, but be weary of this “survey”

  105. 105.

    David

    I sometimes wonder how I managed to learn what I have, to date, seeing as I am an educational product of Oklahoma, through and through. What a sad survey on the ignorance of Oklahoma’s youth – and somehow, I can’t say I’m surprised, given the lesbians hiding in the bathrooms and all.

  106. 106.

    IndieTarheel

    @JK:

    Jay Leno needs to hop a flight to Oklahoma for a special week month of jaywalking with Oklahoma school students.

    Fixed, although I suspect a leisurely stroll through my old stomping grounds in Alabama would yield similar results. Also.

  107. 107.

    Ash Can

    @Gaucho Politico:
    @Comrade Mary:

    I accept that this is a possibility. I gave the OCPA’s article a somewhat cursory read to see if I could find out some details on how the test was administered. If it was in such a way as to be irritating to the students — some jerk from outside the school comes in, talks down to the students, and cuts into their lunch or study hall time, e.g. — then the students are more likely to respond to the test accordingly. But we may never know the extent to which intentional wrong answers had an effect, if at all.

    And speaking of that OCPA article, I have numerous quibbles with it, but this, at least initially, is my main one: The OCPA clearly puts the onus for student failure on the schools themselves. Anyone with any real interest in education will know that a student’s success begins at home. The student’s family — regardless of what the family situation may be — is both figuratively and literally the primary motivator. Teachers and other educational resources are an extremely close second, but secondary they are. Because of this, frankly, I consider the parents/guardians of these students to be at greater fault than the schools themselves. Who’s motivating these kids to do well in school? Who’s checking their homework every night? Who’s admonishing them that it’s a competitive world out there, and success in it begins with success in school? Who’s communicating with the teachers and going to the PTA/school council meetings? Who’s volunteering in the classrooms or for fundraisers?

    Academic success and lack thereof begins at home, and if the OCPA doesn’t acknowledge this, then what good, really, is its survey?

  109. 109.

    Shell

    “of New Jersey [Joyzee is the proper pronunciation among locals] ”

    No, it most decidely is not. ‘Joyzee’ is only pronounced that way by outlanders. Oh, and Joe Piscopo.
    **********************************

    Birthers Gone Wild!!
    Over at Wonkette they had a link to the judges decision on Orly Tait’s latest loon-fest suit. On behalf of that army doctor who got her degree on tax payer money and is now trying to weasel out of deployment to Iraq. By claiming Obama is not….oh, you know.
    But she brings some added onions to the stew! Not only is Barack a usurper and illegal alien, he also, according to her,

    “might have used as many as 149 addresses and 39 social
    security numbers prior to assuming the office of President.”

    Don’t you just love the word ‘might.’

    And Venusians might be nesting in my backyard apple tree.

  112. 112.

    Midnight Marauder

    @Leo:

    There must have been a list of options they choose from. Otherwise we’d have way more variety in the wrong answers.

    I agree. Either way, it doesn’t take more than a cursory glance to realize that something is very rotten with that entire survey process.

  114. 114.

    BFR

    I liked (not) the newcaster’s excuse that “unlike those taking the citizenship test, the student’s did not have time to study for these specific questions.”

    A more correct interpretation would be “unlike those taking the citizenship test, the students did not have any incentive to care about the outcome of this test.”

    I suspect that the results of the survey don’t tell you anything at all.

  115. 115.

    Ash Can

    …And I see from Grumpy Code Monkey’s post that my read-through was indeed very cursory. But my rant stands. Harrumph.

  116. 116.

    Kirk Spencer

    We have a telephone solicitation of high schoolers just before school starts. For those who have high school age children, or recently have had them, or can remember those days themselves, how many problems can you find in that methodology?

    I am completely unsurprised that “I don’t know” rated so high – say it ten times and get back to the x-box or PS3 or whatever.

    Asking in mid August, last days before school, of the most sarcastic, narcissistic age group I know?

    For some reason, I don’t trust the results.

  117. 117.

    gopher2b

    Is it sadder that 75% of those tested didn’t know who the 1st President was or that 5% thought it was Barack Obama?

    (A) True
    (B) Most saddest
    (C) Ten Commandments
    (D) Kenya
    (E) Don’t Know

  121. 121.

    Mark S.

    @Leo:

    There must have been a list of options they choose from. Otherwise we’d have way more variety in the wrong answers.

    No, it wasn’t multiple-choice:

    In considering the profoundly awful results of this survey, it is important to bear in mind that an open-answer format represents a much higher standard than a multiple-choice-format exam, even with high-quality exams such as the NAEP. After all, in a multiple-choice exam, the correct answer is sitting right in front of you.

    For example, one of the questions in this survey is “Who was the first president of the United States?” If students are given four answers, and one of them is George Washington, they have a 25 percent chance of getting the correct answer even if they have no idea who the first president was. But in an open-answer format, you either know the correct answer or you don’t. It is a higher standard, and it’s the standard applied to applicants for U.S. citizenship.

    Which makes it all fishy, as explained by @Drosophila Slayer.

  122. 122.

    Josh in Portland

    What is MicheleMalkinMath?? I don’t pay attention to anything she says… what did I miss?

  123. 123.

    Midnight Marauder

    @Kirk Spencer:

    We have a telephone solicitation of high schoolers just before school starts. For those who have high school age children, or recently have had them, or can remember those days themselves, how many problems can you find in that methodology?

    Agreed. That still doesn’t explain the prevalence of The Monroe Doctrine in the answers, I think.

  125. 125.

    JK

    @Comrade Kevin:

    Hey dude, let’s party.

    Long Live Jeff Spicoli and Mr. Hand.

    Kudos to Sean Penn and Ray Walston for creating some of the best comedy scenes in film history with Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

  127. 127.

    ChrisB

    American exceptionalism indeed!

    (OK, there may have been problems with the test and some may have treated it as a goof but still.)

  128. 128.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    “This study is deeply flawed—perhaps intentionally so—and I think I can prove it to you.

    I spent some time looking over the actual study results (mainly the graphs at bottom with responses, but skimmed the text as well). These are some observations that make me doubt the validity of the study (besides the absurdly poor results on specific questions):

    * Keep in mind it’s an open-answer format (not multiple choice). Nevertheless, for every single question, the results listed add up to 100% exactly—with no “Other” category listed as a catch-all for rarer responses. Most of the questions have only 3-6 different responses listed (besides “Don’t Know”). This is strange in and of itself, and becomes more troubling when you look at some of the particular questions and sets of responses, such as:
    * Question 8: We elect a U.S. Senator for how many years? Responses: Ten – 33%, Four – 17%, Six – 11%, Two – 5%, Don’t Know – 34%. You’re telling me that out of 1000 people, 55% guessed the wrong number (10, 4, or 2), and EVERYONE who guessed the wrong number guessed one of these three numbers? Not enough people guessed, say, 5, or 8, or 1, to even register at all, but 55% guessed from among those 3 numbers? (Similarly, on the number of Supreme Court Justices question, the only responses were 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, or 12. Why did some people think 5, but nobody thought 7, or 11?)

    If all 1000 students were simply picking numbers at random you’d expect that, but most students are at least dimly aware that US elections occur in even-numbered years. Similarly for SCOTUS justices; most students weren’t simply picking numbers at random (we hope), so there’s no real reason to expect a more random distribution.

    * Look at Question 1: What is the Supreme Law of the Land? Responses: The Constitution (26), Declaration of Independence (17), Bill of Rights (5), Gettysburg Address (4), Emancipation Proclamation (3), Monroe Doctrine (2). Now note a couple responses not listed: “Congress,” “The President.” You’re telling me almost 10% of students said “The Gettysburg Address” or “Emancipation Proclamation” or “Monroe Doctrine” but not 1% thought “Congress” is the Supreme Law of the Land?

    Maybe because Congress isn’t a law?

    All of the listed responses are important political documents one encounters in U.S. Civics/History—the kinds of thing a semi-intelligent person might MAKE UP as wrong answers to this question…
    * Or look at Question 7: What are the two major political parties? We have: Democrat and Republican (43), Communist and Republican (11), and Don’t Know (46). So 11% of these conservative students thought of the funny joke answer Communist and Republican, but NOBODY listed the variant “Socialist and Republican”? (And no left-leaning student thought of “Democrat and Fascist”?)

    Are there that many left-leaning students in OK?

    * Also, in response to Question 3, What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress, people thought to give wrong answers like “President and Congress” (!), “President and Supreme Court,” or “Governor and President” (weird right??), but NOBODY gave the answer “Democrats and Republicans”?

    That was already covered under political parties; I think this person is starting to reach for things to be suspicious about.

    * And speaking of Question 8 (Who was the First President of the United States?), 23% gave the correct answer (George Washington), and only 10% said “Don’t Know.” The remaining EIGHT responses—arranged in a nice, linearly decreasing frequency—were split among eight DIFFERENT U.S. Presidents, including Nixon, JFK, GWB, and Obama. Really?

    That’s a pretty strong data point for the respondents not taking the survey seriously.

    * The pattern is the same for all the questions/responses (you can look at the other few I didn’t analyze here yourself): Incorrect responses always come from a basic U.S. Civics/History repertoire of things in the same basic category as the right answer (excluding a couple joke answers). They look more like the incorrect responses you might expect to see the maker of a multiple-choice exam put in—but these are supposedly what students offered up on their own, and the ONLY answers students offered up on their own.
    * Of 1000 students, only six of them answered 7 questions correctly, and none answered 8 or more correctly. These questions are not especially difficult civics questions, yet the results suggest that out of 1000 respondents, not one student was found who was bright/knowledgeable enough to get 8/10 or more right.
    * The text introducing and analyzing the survey results is written in a clearly polemical—as opposed to academic—tone. The group that commissioned this survey very probably wanted students to do poorly, because this calls attention to them and their cause (improving civics education).

    I lived in Oklahoma through college (and heaven knows it’s got its problems), but you don’t have to have lived there to recognize that the purported results of this study are absurd on their face.

    I grew up and live in Texas, and I have absolutely no doubt a random survey of 1000 Texas high-school students would show similarly distressing numbers.

    tl;dr – Various details of the study’s results are highly suspicious, leading me personally to think they were intentionally doctored if not made up out of whole cloth.”

  130. 130.

    Ella in NM

    Please tell me it was a fill in the blank test. I could understand “brain fart” as an excuse. But damn even a multiple choice option would have averaged those kids 50-50 odds getting a passing grade.

  132. 132.

    Alan

    If you haven’t seen this clip from the Rachel Maddow Show where she interviews Frank Schaeffer you missed something great.

    I love this quote:

    [How do you move these people away from these beliefs?]

    Frank Schaeffer: “You don’t work to move them off this position. You move past them. Look, a village cannot reorganize village life to suit the village idiot.”

    But there’s so much more in the clip to like.

  134. 134.

    Bubblegum Tate

    @Andy K:

    Conducted by a conservative Oklahoman think tank (as if there’s any other sort of think tank in Oklahoma). Make of that what you will.

    I was being a sarcasmo in my first post in this thread, but for real, I’d bet that the angle here is going to be “public education is a failure! The only solution is more homeschooling and more vouchers!”

  135. 135.

    Warren Terra

    Drosophila Slayer makes an excellent point – the answers are summarized way too neatly for an open-ended, as opposed to multiple-choice, exam. Now, maybe this is because the people posing the questions binned the answers into categories (to take one example the Fly Swatter highlighted, the only apparent answers for the length of Senate terms were even numbers; maybe they rounded odd numbers to nearby (incorrect) even numbers?), but this needs to be handled transparently.

  136. 136.

    Comrade Darkness

    Is it alliteration with Ms week?

    If it is, I got some emails to send.

    @gopher2b: Is it sadder that 75% of those tested didn’t know who the 1st President was or that 5% thought it was Barack Obama?

    Quick. Pretend you have ADD and can’t read for details… who’s married to the First Lady of the United States?

  139. 139.

    jl

    Thanks to commenters who found the links to the study. I didn’t see them, but am at work and do not have time.

    My question regarding suspicious results: If the answers were open ended, and it wasn’t multiple choice, how come one answered ‘Democratic Party’ as one of the major parties? Or did the rightwing think tank decide which answers to present, and how?

    I don’t know if the results are as suspicous as some commenters above believe, but I think there be fishiness here.

  140. 140.

    Ash Can

    @Bubblegum Tate: I’d bet that the angle here is going to be “public education is a failure! The only solution is more homeschooling and more vouchers!”

    Hear, hear. And the other sensible posts here dissecting the survey methodology are doing a great deal to talk me down and in off the window ledge. But the Oklahoma educational system and its students still have a black eye from this news item, and it’ll only get worse if the corporate media grab hold of this story and run with it.

  141. 141.

    jl

    It is also difficult to believe that all students who gave wrong answers to lengths of Senate terms had one peculiarity in common: they knew the terms were an even number of years? I dunno about that.

  143. 143.

    ellaesther

    @Alan: That is a brilliant! “A village cannot reorganize village life to suit the village idiot.” Indeed.

    I wish we could figure out just how to move past our idiots! It would help immeasurably if our elected officials — regardless of party — would call the idiots out as morons, and dangerous morons at that. But alas, to date, my repeated calls, here there and everywhere on the internet, for the GOP to put on its big girl/boy pants and act like grown-ups have gone unremarked.

    It’s almost like they don’t read my blog.

  146. 146.

    jl

    @Ash Can: news clip said AZ had similar results. I think any place would give roughly similar results.

    Back when I was a TA in grad school, grading tests, I would see amazing stuff. Civil War was sometime between 1800 and 1914. Transcontinental railroad was just before the Great Depression, which was a result of the OPEC boycott, and other bizarre notions.

    For undergraduates, seemed like roubhly 1/3 to 1/2 (in lucky years) of the students were extremely well informed, but about 1/4 to 1/3 who seemed to have lived on another planet their whole lives.

  148. 148.

    West of the Cascades

    With no due respect to the people who wrote this survey, at least three of the answers are technically wrong (corrections in BOLD):

    3. Senate and House OF REPRESENTATIVES

    5. Thomas Jefferson, JOHN ADAMS, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, ROBERT LIVINGSTON & ROGER SHERMAN (the “COMMITTEE OF FIVE”)

    7. DEMOCRATIC and TEA-BAGGER (I mean “Republican”)

  149. 149.

    r€nato

    I would have aced that test EASILY… in junior high.

    Which would have made me smarter (at least as far as civics) than the entire high school population of Oklahoma.

    Good thing they didn’t ask them how old the universe is… the answers would have been depressing.

  151. 151.

    freelancer

    @IndieTarheel:

    My parents are currently in Mobile assisting my wingnut aunt in moving to Oklahoma. My cousins are in their teens/preteens, but I’ve already kind of written them off. They might be smart, I don’t know, but my aunt is an insane teabagging helicopter parent.

  152. 152.

    Demo Woman

    The parents were not quizzed and it is quite possible that the children scores would be in a higher percentile than their parents. What exactly does John mean by ” Is our children learning?’ Learning what? If you asked 1000 high school students who won the OSU/GA score the average would be much higher.

  153. 153.

    jl

    @West of the Cascades: Very good point. Or, for 5, they could have changed it to ‘who wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence?’ but that would have blown minds. People would have thought it signaled a trick question, and the answers would have been really interesting.

  154. 154.

    MH

    Of course, their answer to #9 isn’t technically correct, but I’ll give them a pass for ignoring John Hanson.

    I like how #7 does that conserva-douche trick of referring to the “Democra Party”.

  155. 155.

    Warren Terra

    @ jl, #145

    Back when I was a TA in grad school, grading tests, I would see amazing stuff. Civil War was sometime between 1800 and 1914.

    This answer is, of course, actually correct. Quite vague, and I’d guess that you mean answers were frequently incorrect and mostly taken from within this range – but the answer is not wrong, as stated.

  156. 156.

    Calouste

    @amorphous:

    Nice test….

    One of the lowlights that caught my eye:
    16) In his “I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
    A. argued for the abolition of slavery
    B. advocated black separatism
    C. morally defended affirmative action
    D. expressed his hopes for racial justice and brotherhood
    E. proposed that several of America’s founding ideas were discriminatory

    B and E are not nice, but C is even worse as it neatly indoctrinates the casual reader with the idea that affirmative action is morally wrong.

  158. 158.

    Peter J

    So, it’s not ok for the president to talk to students, but it’s ok for a republican think tank to push poll students?

  159. 159.

    joes527

    @West of the Cascades:

    5. Thomas Jefferson, JOHN ADAMS, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, ROBERT LIVINGSTON & ROGER SHERMAN (the “COMMITTEE OF FIVE”)

    Don’t say that where Jefferson might hear you. He will tell you that the testers got it right and all those other guys did was to tell him to write it.

    While Jefferson was clearly the writer of the first complete draft, and the bulk of that draft made it through into the final document, the real “authorship” if the document are clouded by the mists of time and personal pride.

  160. 160.

    Jim C

    @West of the Cascades:

    Maybe all these kids were in productions of 1776 over the summer?

    “If I’m the one to do it, they’ll run their quill pens through it! I’m obnoxious and disliked, did you know that?”

  161. 161.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I most certainly would have scored 10/10 on this test IN FOURTH GRADE for FSM’s sake. Not to mention all the state capitals (of course, when I was in fourth grade there were only 48 states, so it was a lot easier to memorize the list).

  163. 163.

    Pangloss

    The guy from Pakistan in the office next to me got 8/10.

    I suppose some of them guessed “Jesus” as the answer to every question.

  165. 165.

    Travis

    Wow, I am qualified to comment on this. I went to elementary, public, middle & high school in Oklahoma, ultimately leaving for an Ivy League school and never returning.

    Still, the conclusion from this sample seem wrong to me. It is certainly true that education was not valued, and I was extremely happy to get the hell out of that state. Yet, so many of the answers here are playfully wrong, e.g., calling George W. Bush or Barack Obama the first president of the United States, or implying that the Democrats are Communists. So I think they were just having fun or being indifferent, e.g., hitting “I don’t know” over and over.

    I would like to see the results from a test where the students really cared about the results, e.g., SAT or equivalent.

    Incidentally, a friend of mine from high school reconnected with me on Facebook. I was heartbroken to exchange email with her and find her to be almost entirely illiterate: her emails didn’t have ANY punctuation, much less correct punctuation. There were no sentences, really.

  167. 167.

    Cyrus

    @amorphous: Agreed, some items on that test are leading questions, and some are just weird. What in the world do Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas even have to do with American history? I guess the right answer is D., “Christianity is the only true religion and should rule the state,” but I’ll have to see once I finish taking the test.

    And as for the original post, people aren’t paying enough attention to Drosophila Slayer. I’m sure Oklahomans may be idiots in general, but this specific survey is ridiculous. Open-ended questions, fewer than six shown for each, and yet it all totals 100 percent? Not even one kid in a thousand got them all right? I smell bullshit.

    @Grumpy Code Monkey:

    You’re telling me almost 10% of students said “The Gettysburg Address” or “Emancipation Proclamation” or “Monroe Doctrine” but not 1% thought “Congress” is the Supreme Law of the Land?
    Maybe because Congress isn’t a law?

    Neither is the Monroe Doctrine, nor the Getttysburg Address, not the Emancipation Proclamation. Congress is closer to being the supreme law of the land than any of those. Drosophilia’s point stands; “Congress” is a likely enough answer that if the survey were being reported fairly, it would probably be there.

    That’s a pretty strong data point for the respondents not taking the survey seriously.

    Yes, which means it can’t be taken at face value.

  168. 168.

    arithmoquine

    The correct answers are in fact:
    1. The supreme law of the land in America is the golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.
    2. Not worth the paper they’re printed on.
    3. Two parts of US Congress are the dumbfucks and the whiny little shits.
    4. This is a trick question; the correct answer is that there is no justice on the US Supreme Court.
    5. This one is oversimplified but ok.
    6. This is also a trick question; there are no oceans on the east coast or on any coast. Oceans abut, are beside, next-to or are adjacent to coasts but are not on top of them.
    7. Same as answer #3.
    8. We elect them for as long as they want to be there or until they have sex with one or more of the following: a prostitute, a farm animal, another man in a men’s room, their assistant, a lobbyist, or a lover in Argentina. Just kidding, the only one that rules you out is the farm animal, and that’s only if you’re caught.
    9. Washington is actually the correct answer here too.
    10. The executive branch is run by a collection of powerful economic interests who pull the strings of someone elected from a group of nearly-identical candidates who will continue to do the bidding of exactly those interests (with some minor variation in which interests have the greatest influence).

    The correct answers from the conservative Oklahoman perspective:
    1. The Bible
    2. The Right to Bear Arms and toilet paper
    3. Us (Republicans) and Them (the Other)
    4. Scalia and Thomas–the rest have already been impeached in citizen tribunals
    5. God
    6. Liberal, east coast elite oceans that deserve to be pumped for oil
    7. Us–Republicans; there is only one political party in Oklahoma
    8. Forever if they’re Republicans; never if they’re democRats
    9. Newt Gingrich (but also God)
    10. Dick Cheney (and don’t forget God)

    As many have noted, the Oklahoma Council on Public Affairs is a right-wing group committed to undermining public education in OK. That doesn’t mean that their statistics are wrong, but I would not place my trust in them doing a proper survey given that they are trying to show OK students to be ignorant boobs. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if people like the OCPA are responsible for 11% of Oklahoma students thinking that the two major political parties are Communists and Republicans.

    And, equally seriously, many of the questions were poorly phrased, “What do we call…?” Who the hell are “we” anyway?

    “How long do we elect Senators?” That should be “What is the (constitutionally mandated) length of a senator’s term in office?” Or something like that. This question assumes that “We” elect them. I never elected any Senators when I was in OK, and they served a helluva lot longer than one term most of the time, so we elected them for more than six years. I’m not saying this unclarity completely explains the weird answers, but it suggests that the survey was not done with the strictest of standards.

  170. 170.

    Cyrus

    @amorphous:
    OK, I finished the test linked here. I got 30 right, and the other three I deliberately got wrong to see what the “right” answer was. I’m awesome. (I tried leaving them blank, but it wouldn’t let me.) The ones I got wrong were 13, about the philosophers; 27, about why the free market is best; and 33, about what it means to have taxes equal to spending. In hindsight, 27 and 33 should have been obvious.

  171. 171.

    Leelee for Obama

    32 out of 33! I rock! The tax v. spending question got me. I thought it was zero debt. I still do.

  172. 172.

    jl

    @Warren Terra: I apologize for not be ridiculously pedantic. What I meant was that many students gave wrong guesses within that broad timespan.

    Too bad these misinformed students couldn’t have transferred to a school that follows your didactic appraoch, they would have had a better chance there.

  175. 175.

    Caravelle

    The conclusion here isn’t that the kids didn’t know the answers to the questions (although I’m sure a lot of them didn’t), but that a whole lot of them didn’t care about the test and hardly read the questions at all.
    I’m sorry, there is no level of stupid that will have 5% of the children sincerely thinking that Obama was the first president of the United States. So either things are worse than you think because the students can’t even read, or the kids knew this test wouldn’t count for the finals (did it ?) so they answered more or less at random so they could leave/sleep for the rest of the test.

  178. 178.

    dlw

    I’d take those numbers with a grain of salt. Many kids that age see these kinds of tests as a joke and don’t have any reason to put down the right answer, even if they do know it.

  181. 181.

    mai naem

    Was this a multiple choice test? Maybe that explains the Monroe Doctrine answers and some of other stupid answers. Also too, anybody catch the anchor so “to be fair, the kids didn’t get to study unlike prospective citizens.” Hello, the kids looked like HS kids. They should have covered the vast majority of stuff in school already.

  182. 182.

    Brian J

    P.S. That’s about the only thing I found amusing on Leno’s “Tonight Show.” I tuned in to his 10 p.m. show on Monday out of curiosity and came away unimpressed with its slapped-together quality. NBC lost its pride—and all of its good scripted dramas.

    I’d say we give him a week or two before we judge his performance. He’s been off the air for three or four months, so he was bound to be a little rusty.

    If nothing else, I hope he tries to make it something else than an earlier version of “The Tonight Show” when he was hosting it. Even if some bits fail, it’s worth it to try to break out a little.

  183. 183.

    slag

    I’m just glad that, according to #michellemalkinmath, Obama will be President for 846,379 years, so he’ll have just enough time to help us resolve our education problems.

  184. 184.

    Tongue of Groucho Marx

    Actually, I think this survey is bullshit.

    First of all, from the article, it says that the survey was commissioned by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs _ which, by the way, has ‘school choice’ as one of its primary policy goals. So, the survey is being commissioned by an explicitly partisan group. The Arizona study was also commissioned by the Goldwater Institute, which also doesn’t exactly have non-partisan leanings.

    The test was also done over the phone. Any telephone interview where the subjects are contacted randomly will be done rather hastily, as the students aren’t really given adequate time to think over some of the answers. If you honestly think that students are going to spend more than 10 seconds thinking about the answers over the phone when they could be doing something else…

    Finally, any survey that claims only 23% of high school students knew who the first president was is absurd. That no student out of 1000 could answer more than 7 questions should lead to some questioning of the surveyors.

    The really sad thing about this survey is that there are people who are trumpeting how their kindergartner already knows all 10 of the answers, while also failing to account that the survey was conducted really fucking badly.

  185. 185.

    Tongue of Groucho Marx

    Oh, and according to the OCPA, 2% of the students really, truly think that Michael Jackson wrote the Declaration of the Independence.

    Assuming that they really aren’t making shit up, all this really says is that there isn’t much variety in Oklahoma high school snark.

  186. 186.

    Ecks

    Actually I’m surprised that none of them answered that the first president was Sam Bradford… if that had been a 2% answer I might have started believing them.

  187. 187.

    Gravenstone

    @amorphous: I find it amusing how the claims 45% is the average, with 55% for educators, yet current average reported for Spetember is 74.5%. Although I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised, given that about halfway through it veers widely from US history and government to WIngnutistan oriented “free market” drivel.

    Oh, and I got 33/33. *smirks*

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