The Civic Literacy Quiz

From way back in early December, from a comment left on my blog by commenter Bernstein, comes this Civic Literacy test that Americans supposedly do so bad at.

I took the test and scored something like 46/60, for a score of 77%. I'd be more upset with myself if I thought the test was any good. It's not.

The last dozen questions or so were on the topic of the free market and economics. They were silly, with some of them being false.

But then again, I'm not surprised. Look at the mission statement of the organization that puts on the quiz:

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) was founded in 1953 to further in successive generations of American college youth a better understanding of the economic, political, and ethical values that sustain a free and humane society.

Crap like that - and yes, it is crap - sets off all sorts of alarm bells in my head, because "free society" is often claimed to be synonymous with capitalism. (And how can a society that permits the death penalty be called 'humane'?)

Too bad the result of capitalism is most certainly not democracy. In fact, the two are just about polar opposites when it comes to values and ideology. I know it's been fashionable to rhetorically equate the two recently, but seriously.

A sample question (not chosen at random):

50) Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government’s centralized planning because:

Can you spot the assumption? Hint: It's the word 'more'. The questions implies an empirical claim, but provides no evidence and instead treats it like fact. And no, shouting "Soviet Union" does not count as evidence... unless you were looking for a Magical Communist Pony.

How about this one:

51) Which of the following is the best measure of production or output of an economy?

When the answer is Gross Domestic Product, I know I'm in the presence of wishful thinking. GDP is the commonly accepted answer to this question, it's true, but Robert Kennedy shredded that notion a long time ago:

The gross national product includes air pollution and advertising for cigarettes and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and jails for the people who break them. GNP includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm, and missiles and nuclear warheads... it does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, or the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

Basically, the latter part of the test gets at how well you believe the dominant ideology of the United States, not how informed you are. There's a substantial difference.

Heck, the first part of the quiz contains a bunch of questions that are completely irrelevant to modern life, even if we include knowledge of history as a causal factor as relevant knowledge.

Reinforcing the Dominant Paradigm, Special Sexism Edition

Because lord knows not a single American was gay before the 1960s...

From another of those blasted books:

A man on the frontier with a family needs a woman, and so, within a year, Thomas Lincoln married Sarah Bush Johnston, who had three children of her own.

This in a chapter supposedly about Abraham Lincoln's early years.

Grr.

Subverting Reinforcing the Dominant Paradigm

From a chapter titled "Red Scare" in a book students at work were reading today:

In that same postwar time, there were also some anarchists in America. Anarchists don't believe in government at all. You don't have to be very smart to realize that anarchy doesn't work. But, when the anarchists looked around and saw poverty, war, and evil, they thought that this was the fault of governments. Some may have really believed that the answer was to do away with all governments. A few tried to do that by setting off bombs intended to kill government leaders. That, of course, was criminal behavior. Newspapers made big headlines of the bombs. Many Americans were frightened....

That was the entirety of the chapter's mention of anarchism - except for the blurb on Sacco and Vanzetti, who, according to the book, "may or may not have been guilty."

The book series was A History of the U.S.: War, Peace, and All That Jazz by Joy Hakim. Specifically, it was Book #9, Page 35.

The treatment of communism was almost as silly and just as shallow.

There was no mention of the Progressive or Labor movements at this time, or of the Socialist movement.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, this is an idiotic representation of anarchism.... but that's what reinforcing the dominant paradigm is all about. Not only does the author lump the huge variety of existing anarchisms together, she implies the old "anarchy means chaos" bit by not acknowledging any other form of organization besides the "government" (and without further context or definitions, when written in a history book for high schoolers, that means "American-style government").

David Brooks on Sal Paradise

I have to admit I'm a little surprised to see David Brooks writing about Jack Kerouac's On the Road.

I'm less surprised by what he has to say:

In the Times review that launched the book, Gilbert Millstein raved that “On the Road” was a frenzied search for affirmation, a book that rejected the ennui, pessimism and cynicism of the Lost Generation. The heroes of the book savored everything, enjoyed everything, took pleasure in everything.

...

“On the Road” turned 50 last month, and over the past few weeks a line of critics have taken another look at the book, and this time their descriptions of it, whether they like it or not, are very different.

“Above all else, the story is about loss,” George Mouratidis, one of the editors of a new edition, told The Age in Melbourne.

“It’s a book about death and the search for something meaningful to hold on to — the famous search for ‘IT,’ a truth larger than the self, which, of course, is never found,” wrote Meghan O’Rourke in Slate.

Fair enough, though I suspect that the folks who are reviewing the book now are not oblivious to the frantic energy that pervades its pages. Instead, I suspect, they are trying to add something new to the discussion about Kerouac.

Then Brook says this:

If Sal Paradise were alive today, he’d be a product of the new rules. He’d be a grad student with an interest in power yoga, on the road to the M.L.A. convention with a documentary about a politically engaged Manitoban dance troop that he hopes will win a MacArthur grant. He’d be driving a Prius, going a conscientious 55, wearing a seat belt and calling Mom from the Comfort Inns.

The only thing we know for sure is that this ethos won’t last. Someday some hypermanic kid will produce a moronically maxed-out adventure odyssey that will spark the overdue rebellion among all the over-pressured SAT grinds, and us grumpy midlife critics will get to witness a new Kerouac, and the greatest pent-up young-life crisis in the history of the world.

Somehow, Brooks manages to shift into another vague complaint about modern culture.

I agree with Brooks, though, at least a little bit. And it pains me to say that, because I don't like most of his writing. But I do think he's got a point, though maybe not the point he was intending to make.

I think Brooks paints the modern Kerouac as what he see as a liberal/yuppie type - but I don't think the analogy to Kerouac holds, since Kerouac wasn't even a stereotypical 60's radical. He certainly wasn't a stereotypical 50's conservative, either, but I don't think one can conflate the Beat movement with the 60's counterculture movement in the way that Brooks is implying here. In fact, I wouldn't call Kerouac a "liberal" in the sense that he held as a priority anti-racism or anti-sexism. (C'mon, have you read On the Road? It's pretty male-centered.) I would call Kerouac a Beat, or a free thinker, or something, but not a liberal,and certainly not in the sense Brooks is implying with his caricature.

If there is a reason that Kerouac cannot exist today - because that's what Brooks is arguing - then it's certainly not some liberal hippie bullcrap. Instead, I think it's the totalizing nature of capitalism. A Jack Kerouac today would have immense trouble existing in any meaningful way outside the grasp of modern commercialism - a commercialism fueled by capitalism. The head space that Kerouac took advantage of, the cracks he threw himself into at full speed - those are much harder to come by today. It's much harder to disengage with the master narratives and really develop one's own at this point.

There very well might be a Kerouac sitting in a hovel in New York right now, typing furiously away. She might have already written a "moronically maxed-out adventure odyssey," but I have my doubts that anything like that will get a grip on anything like mainstream society. No, I think that sort of writing, and adventure, happens at the margins, in places that Brooks - and I, really - don't tread.



UPDATE: There is also this passage from Brooks that I forgot to make fun of:

But reading through the anniversary commemorations, you feel the gravitational pull of the great Boomer Narcissus. All cultural artifacts have to be interpreted through whatever experiences the Baby Boomer generation is going through at that moment.

I guess Brooks' voice is universal then. I'm sure he's never changed his mind about something based on new information or a new perspective on life.

David Brooks, the universal moral constant.

Unearned privilege sure does funny things to people.

Is This Subversive?

Via Pandagon, or Unsprung, or wherever the hell it is Amanda Marcotte is blogging these days, an image that caused me to do a triple-take.

I'm not really sure how to take this. I have no idea how it plays in a French - or English - context, and I know it would be incredibly controversial in the U.S. (Just imagine it using football players instead of rugby players.)

Click the link for a larger image (and look closely)

Personally, I think it is hilarious and subversive as hell.