Time for a national civics lesson

I'm afraid that our country is in a pretty sad state right now. It was recently reported that our elected officials really don't know much about our country, our government or economics. According to the Intercollegiat Studies Institute, the average score for an elected official on their 33 question civics quiz was just 44%. Not that the average citizen did much better at 49%. You can view all the results at the following link:

http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/2008/additional_finding.html

Two things jump out at me.

First, it's painfully apparent that our teachers are not teaching American history. That or they're teaching some sort of revised version of it which bears no resemblence to what actually happened.

Second, We really, really need to do a better job of electing people to our government. I kind of think that a test should be required before they're permitted to run for office to prove that they have a basic knowledge of how our government works and what rights our citizens have and what restraints there are on government.

Want to see how you fare against the people who govern you? Take the test at the following link. It's only 33 questions so it won't take too long. If I hadn't read about the results from previous test takers I would have been upset at my score since I consider myself to be a bit of a history buff and pretty knowledgable about the founding principles of our country. But, given that the average citizen only scored 49% and the average elected official only scored 44%, my 87.88% (I missed 4 of the 33 questions) looks pretty darn good. Still, I think I should have done better.

http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx