Comments on: Literacy Quizzes (Again)

By: fx15

fx15 — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:14:50 +0000

Looked at by itself, the quiz seems to me more a case of undifferentiated trivia nerd than bearing a particular political agenda. I guess it?? a matter of what you think the wrong answers are supposed to do in the minds of the quiz-takers. If you??e supposed to take away the lesson that the wrong answers are definitely wrong, then pointing out that the right to bear arms is not in the First Amendment could be read, by those of a sufficiently paranoid bent, as a crafty trick to fool people into thinking it?? not in the Bill of Rights at all. On the other hand, if you??e supposed to subliminally think that they might be true, then all those other options for what Dr. King could have advocated get some cachet from him. wiki

By: fx15

fx15 — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:14:16 +0000

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:02:41 +0000

As an aside, this is precisely the kind of quiz which our state board of education thinks we should be doing more of in our upper division courses, because it’s precisely the kind of quiz which our teacher ed candidates have to pass — aka the Praxis — in order to be credentialed.

I have to wonder, though, in this day and age, why people (I’ve seen it right, left and nonpartisan, mind you) persist in putting out these kinds of crappy quizzes which everyone recognizes are flawed by leading questions, self-serving definitions and fundamentally unrevealing of anything.

By: Kali

Kali — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 14:31:10 +0000

Looked at by itself, the quiz seems to me more a case of undifferentiated trivia nerd than bearing a particular political agenda. I guess it’s a matter of what you think the wrong answers are supposed to do in the minds of the quiz-takers. If you’re supposed to take away the lesson that the wrong answers are definitely wrong, then pointing out that the right to bear arms is not in the First Amendment could be read, by those of a sufficiently paranoid bent, as a crafty trick to fool people into thinking it’s not in the Bill of Rights at all. On the other hand, if you’re supposed to subliminally think that they might be true, then all those other options for what Dr. King could have advocated get some cachet from him.

The question on the Lincoln-Douglas debates could be argued either way. All those things they didn’t debate are fairly egalitarian. On the other hand, to take only the correct answer as true points out the rather damning fact that the Confederates seceded not to defend their own slavery, but to defend their right to expand slavery.

Of course they didn’t see much difference. Lincoln – in the debates, in the Cooper Union speech, and elsewhere – plaintively pointing out that banning slavery was nowhere in his platform sounds a lot like Obama plaintively assuring us that he has no plans to kill Grandma. They’re both right, but the nutballs won’t listen.

By: lemmy caution

lemmy caution — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 00:03:58 +0000

That was an odd quiz. It helped in answering the questions to know the conservative slant of the quiz, plus the fact that they really want people to get the questions wrong for chicken little reasons. 13) Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas would concur that Those conservatives really love their Aquinas: Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term â€œseparation between church and state.â€) It cracked me up to see a pro-Aquinas/anti-Jefferson slant in a fricking civics quiz. Another: over 80% got the subject of the Lincoln-Douglas debates wrong. Again I suspect many identified that the debates were about slavery, rather than whether slavery would be extended to new states. And again, I guess I wonder at the significance of getting that wrong, because the moral question of slavery was an undercurrent to those debates, to the Civil War, and to its aftermath. Unless youâ€re one of those who want to maintain that it was all about Northern aggression and statesâ€ rights. Which is to say the least, a contentious interpretation, and hardly one that makes a person who holds to it â€œliterateâ€ in American history or civics. Quite the opposite. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas would concur that slavery is no big deal: Slavery among men is natural, for some are naturally slaves