Wonkette
Fine then: What is your name? Do you know what your name is? CAN YOU ANSWER THIS QUESTION? [Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs]
DERP DERP DERP
10. (B) Are they Satin?
Everybody knows the Supreme Law of the Land is whatever Drudge says it is.
~
In defense of the high school students, they’re from Oklahoma. When is all of this history mumbo jumbo ever going to be relevant to them?
Ironicly the pollsters in their rush to make americans look stupid again got one of their own super easy questions wrong. The answer to number 7 is the Democratic and Republican parties. Who is feeling all smug now.
It might be time to start kicking out states for being dumb. Just saying.
A surprisingly high percentage know Geography though, so it’s not all bad! Quite impressive, especially as it’s an oceans question given to a group of children who live in a land-locked state.
What I really want to see is the list of most frequent wrong answers. I suspect that answer, applicable to every question, was “Jesus”.
As long as they never forget Kayne’s a jackass, they’ll be fine …
Question: What stations does your TV satellite pick up?
Answer: FOX, FOX News, and FOX Sports.
Percent of correct answers: 100
Those questions are lifted directly from the US Citizenship test.
La Migra is going to need a lot of cattle cars when it deports the entire state of Oklahoma.
Can we give this test to all the tea party retards? And to Michelle Bachmann?
Oklahoma, OK!
61% of US American students guessed that the Atlantic was the ocean to their right. Suck it, Hungarians, you landlocked goulash eaters!
1. Jeebus
2. 10 Commandments
3. Foreplay, intercourse
4. The Supremes had 3: Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, and somebody
5. Sally Hemmings
6. Gulf of Mexico
7. AC and DC
8. 1, in Colorado
9. Reagun, the first REAL prez
10. Cheney
Carson: Who would volunteer to read it to them?
Suds McKenzie: Satan or Satin?
ROY KRUK AND GENERAL MCCARTHUR WROTE THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE GOD DAMMIT. They were sharing an Arch Deluxe. Edgar Kaiser had a say, but this didn’t come about until Richard Nixon wrote the Constitution.
WHY CANT THESE KIDS GET THESE TESTS RIGHT? Stupid children.
Suds McKenzie: Or maybe another fabric like muslin.
ManchuCandidate: If this works for the U.S., then Minnesota will want to kick out the 6th District, for being dumb enough to elect and RE-elect Michelle Bachmann.
This pretty well explains Oklahoma’s Congressional delegation.
Wow - the question the highest percentage of people got right was what ocean was east of the U.S.! You’d think the landlocked dummies wouldn’t know that; I suspect every classroom had a U.S. map on the wall (under the ten commandments and Glenn Beck picture), that 100% of the students looked at it during the test, with only 43% knowing which direction was east.
Shockingly, everyone got the following wrong:
How many horns does Obama have?
ManchuCandidate: If you’re dumb below a certain level & cannot claim retardation and so cannot be executed (except in Texas & Arkansas) you should be sold into slavery. Sit back and watch the GDP rise. The slaves will be too dumb to know it sucks.
This explains a lot about Jim Inhofe, doesn’t it?
Suds McKenzie: i love the feel of satin, so soft and pillowy
Was the person asking the questions sitting all smug-like in his chair, legs crossed, peering over his reading glasses? Was his name Charlie Gibson? This poll was slanted to make our kids look stupid. Hastily reached excuses for why this so in 3…2…1…
ManchuCandidate: I support that idea, with the previso that we are allowed to add smart countries as new states to replace them, i.e. kick out Oklahoma and annex Singapore.
So, basically, every child is left behind?
Oh good lord, did anyone look at the graphs near the bottom of that article?
What Ocean is on the East Coast of the US? INDIAN OCEAN 3%
What are the two major political parties? COMMUNIST AND REPUBLICAN (?!) 11%
Who wrote the Constitution? MICHAEL JACKSON 2%
Oklahoma’s New Motto: “Too Stupid To Be American!”
mookworthjwilson: I’m sticking with Satin.
Jukesgrrl: You forgot CBN.
I still want to give these kids the benefit of the doubt. I think a lot of them filled in joke answers because the answers were so obvious. Everyone knows that John Hansen was the first president of the United States.
Which elicits the obvious questions: are Oklahomans stupid because they elected Jim Inhoffe, or did they elect Jim Inhoffe because they’re stupid?
Fuck you Okies. They even managed a “Democrat” party. On a test. Fuck you.
I’ll take “Orly Taitz” for $800, Alex.
There is only one way to salvage Oklahoma at this point. More tornados.
Response to ocean question is not much of a surprise. Anyone with average intelligence in Oklahoma looks for a way outta there.
People… IT”S OKLAHOMA!!!!
Is it any wonder we have to import all our physicians from Injuh and China? Granny Clampett would roll over in her grave.
I CAN HAZ NASCAR NOW?
As the conservative who admininstered the test noted, in fact only 3 percent of the kids would have achieved the 6 out of 10 score needed to acquire citizenship, i.e. most of them guessed and got a few right, but 97% couldn’t muster a 6. And you know there were a couple of smart kids who got 9 out of 10 or so who skewed the percentages upwards. So really, the results of this test as presented give an overly rosey impression; under 3% would pass.
Ergo, they are not here legally, and must be deported.
Other fun fact: the test was given in Arizona and the results were very similar.
user-of-owls:
Yes, the questions are from the US Citizenship test.
92.4 % of the foreigners taking the citizenship test pass on the first try.
2.8% of the Oklahoma kids passed.
A co-worker and I just took this quiz and apparently we both have to leave the country now. FAIL
sprankles: mookworthjwilson: Now excuse me, I’m trying to find a single chicken on Craig’s List.
You guys are burying the lede: only 2.8% of the surveyed high-school Okies answered the 6 out of 10 questions legally required to qualify to be recommended for US citizenship. That’s 28 out of 1000.
I demand this test be conducted in every single state and the bottom 10 can be allowed to secede.
RoscoePColtraine:
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….Unfortunately, Oklahoma high-school students scored alarmingly low on the test, passing at a rate of only 2.8 percent. That is not a misprint.
These people have been caught with Flaming Lips.
I hate to write off a whole state, but is there ANYTHING worthwhile there at all? I can’t think of anything.
Serolf Divad: No, Oklahomans are stupid because every single county in Oklahoma vote in favor of John McCain in the last election.
PrairiePossum: well, PrairiePossum, that just shows that those furners don’t belong here in Amurhika.
user-of-owls: AxmxZ: PrairiePossum: Norbert:
In my defense, it is hard to be quick on the draw when you lack opposable thumbs.
Norbert: “And you know there were a couple of smart kids who got 9 out of 10 or so who skewed the percentages upwards.”
You’d think that, wouldn’t you, but no. Only six kids out of that thousand managed to get 7 right out of 10; no one got 8, 9 or 10 right. Now that’s what I call cream of the OK crop!
Ha, Jukesgrrl, you’re so ignorant, you forgot Fox Business Channel!
“…But all they taught us was abstinence!”
fisk27: Well-caught.
Suds McKenzie: Though there are plenty of chickens in loveless marriages who want to feel heard again.
Oklahoma’s State Rock Song: “Do You Realize We’re All Illiterate Yobs?” by the Laming Lips
FUCKIN’ A! It’s not just that on average they are dumb, but they are ALL fucking dumb!
NO ONE got more than 7 questions right– and only 6 percent of the students got 7 right!
On average, most kids got only about 4 questions right, and the highest percentage of students got only 3 right. Yikes!
user-of-owls: The quiz has no questions at all pertaining to practical knowledge, such as how to clean out the hog pen, how to get your crops in before the first cold snap, or how to convince your first cousin (who is beautiful) to marry you. Sure, if I ever needed to know how many justices are on the supreme court, I might take the time to learn up on it. The quiz is biased against hard-working, real Murkins.
AxmxZ: Oy. Maybe the smart kids were tired of getting wedgies and deliberately sabotaged themselves to get a 7.
So, the majority answered “I don’t know” for every question. Is this just because they always usually take tests that mark you down for giving a wrong answer? My knowledge of American schooling is based upon the Simpsons.
If so, that’s a failure in test technique. They should have been forced to answer something - even a guess might be right (and that’s what someone taking a real USCIS test would do). Or, on the hand, it may be hilarious.
RoscoePColtraine: This quiz is biased against morans…oh, wait, you already said as much.
And a slight correction: I think you meant “clean out your first cousin’s pen” and “convince your hog (who is beautiful) to marry you.” Easy mistake.
Way to go, OK! Makin’ SC look good for - um - some years now.
user-of-owls: Answering “Michael Jackson” to a question like that is just a way of saying “Fuck You and Fuck your survey.” If instead of Michael Jackson, the answer had been “Fuck You,” then 2% of OK students would have said that Fuck You (a Korean-American, maybe?) wrote the Declaration of Independence.
I guess we just figured out how McCain won every county in Oklahoma.
Oklahoma: Making Kansas the Mensa of the Midwest since 2009.
Norbert: Or maybe smart Oklahoman is oxymoran (okiemoran? - no that is merely redundant).
Having just taken the USCIS test a few weeks ago, I’m not really surprised at the lack of high scorers. I only got 9 out of 10 right myself. The question that tripped me up? “Who is the current governor of your state?” I was sitting there and desperately trying to recall Pat Quinn’s name, and the interviewer lady was laughing at my mumbling: “Christ, who was Blago’s lieutenant governor? Patrick…Patrick something…Goddamn, this state is fucked up.”
I bet a venn diagram of these sad, ignorant children and sad ignorant children whose parents are tea bagging protesters would look like a total eclipse of the sun.
Well here’s the problem with the methodology:
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 you tell kids “I don’t know” is permissible, some of ‘em are gonna think you mean it’s the right answer, and they’ll just stick with that. Hell, half the people who took the quiz think they got a perfect score.
Way Cool Larry: They don’t make it easy for those trying to make a case for the beknighted state.
To wit: In the heart of the Cherokee nation lies Tecumseh. The school sports nickname/mascot? The Savages.
Godless Liberal: Today, we are all Home Alone.
Everybody complains about America’s stupid children, but no one does anything about them.
Where is our friend DustBowlBlues? Probably at the dentist.
Bet every one of them can tell you, to the minute, how long until Sam Bradford comes back from injury.
fisk27: That’s actually a sign that whoever wrote out the answers was a Republican. They’re the only ones who call it the Democrat party.
aleks: Except for Mike Huckabee who has agreed to fry them and eat them with buttah.
Man, Wolf Blitzer really brought down the curve!
Extemporanus:
Nope, he’d fit right in. Wolfie should move to Oklahoma. His kind of place, intellectually.
bhosp: You’re right. When I a callow lad of 18 or so, I took a survey and wrote in the word ‘drugs’ in every answer blank.
sezme: I think you mean “east,” since west would be to someone’s right if they were facing south.
Just saying, jeez…
Wookies is on it. “I don’t know” by far leads nearly every question. Now I don’t doubt that OK children are not the most well educated kids in the US, but that poll is pushed.
By the way, the organization behind the poll (who hired the pollsters) is archconservative and has as one goal to discredit the teachers’ union in Oklahoma. Just sayin’
Treat “I don’t know” as an abstention. If you take ratio of all wrong answers to right answers, you still get evidence of ignorance, though milder. You also get a poor sample size; only one or two kids have to pick Michael Jackson to make an impact.
Also, phone polls that include lists of answers–that is, read multiple choice questions–are tough to answer. Given the evidence of slant in the questions, such as “Democrat Party”, I’d also expect that the delivery is suspect. If NCLB has taught us anything, it is that there are dozens of ways to push a test toward showing that kids don’t know stuff.
Of course these “kids is stupid and am not learning” polls are always entertaining. But anyone who spends much time in a high school will see that question as not simple. I gave the quiz to my students this morning, and got one perfect score and four 9’s, and only one score below 5. I didn’t let them pick “I don’t know.” I teach in Minnesota, but not in the Sixth.
ice9
This is one of the sorriest fucking things I’ve ever seen. Fuck you, Middle America. Maybe add ‘learning things’ to your pwweshuss value system, ever. Cocks.
icenine: Word. I’m willing to believe that lots of Americans are dumb, but come the fuck on? George Washington? Every motherfucker knows that, no matter how they answer a phone poll.
RoscoePColtraine: I don’t know what them libtards got agin mekkin the proper answer “A” every time, but thet there’s the best grade a kid gan get and stands fer ‘Murka to boot anyhow. This test is one’a them turrst attacks.
Fuckers know their geography…
geminisunmars: Oxyhoman.
So, when Texas secedes, can they just take Oklahoma with them?
Alt-tag: Dept. of Low-Hanging Fruit
TGY: Ahh. That’s what I was looking for.
icenine: They allow teachers in OK to form a union???
mookworthjwilson: Only if they are opposite-sex.
Oklahoma is just the fucked-up, tractor-brand baseball cap on the thick-skullcap, near-empty cranium of Texas.
Oklahoma is the place Texans go to trow trash out the window.
Oklahoma and Texas compete about how many dry counties they each have, only second to high-school football.
Suffered through a few years in Dallas-Ft. Worth (the downtown tornado was my welcome to FTW) but would never, ever live on Okieland. Ever. Not even for free weed.
Carson: YOU TOOK MY ANSWER! TEACHER ! TEACHER HE’S CHEATING!!!!
In that test, the question about the two major political parties gave these answer choices:
a) Democrat and Republican
b) Communist and Republican
c) I don’t know
And still, only 43% of them got it right.
Since i cant use my first answer: stares at Carson….i shall supply this…
are these questions that Wolf got wrong yesterday?
Needs more Jeebus.
Okay ready for the scary part at least to me? High school students actually have classes and learn shit. Well shittier shit in Oklahoma than elsewhere but anyway.
Their parents are not in school getting their information all freshened up by classes and stuff so they would have forgotten stuff. They would score even lower.
I just asked my ninth grade kid these questions and he only missed the supreme court one.
This is evidence of why property taxes are a lot higher in New Jersey than Oklahoma.
Nim, ham hock of liberty: That’s because, to Oklahomans, all three answers are correct.
icenine: I’ll give you that the phone/multiple choice format may have skewed the results, but not as much as 2.8% vs. 92.4%. That’s some Grade A Oklahoma stupid.
Serolf Divad: Could you repeat the question, please?
This is…comedy gold. There’s no other word for it. “Communist and Republican”? “Michael Jackson”?! Oh, and apparently not only is George W. Bush the first president, but it doesn’t matter anyway, since the governor is doing double duty as the head of the executive branch and one of the two parts of the legislative branch. Oh, and of course, Barack Obama wrote the Declaration of Independence.
AxmxZ: Okay, if you take the citizenship test, you don’t get multiple choices, right? You have to KNOW the answer. So, the new citizens are even smarter than these kids don’t look. Methodology, and shitty teenager attitudes aside, of course.
All the “smart” Okies left fer suthern californya 80 sum-odd years ago, so what’s left is 80 years of dust-breathin & in-breedin.
I’ll be out of here soon enough.
mardam422: Here’s what a Communist I am — I had to google CBN to find out what those initials stood for! But I knew all the answers to the test, so you can’t deport me, much as many might like to.
facehead: Only the Jews have horns, not the half-breed muslins.
Fuck. I knew I should have stopped with the David Brooks is a dumb shit story and not scrolled down. Embarrassed, again. Yeah but ask them how old the world is–6,000 years old!
But to dump on another state: When I worked in Seattle for the Civil Service Commission–the city’s employee appeal board–I got calls from all kinds of people. People who wanted a job with the “guvment” for instance. When I say which level? They said, Duh? When I named the four levels (distinguishing city/county in this case) they said, “Just the government.” Then I had to explain they are all different. Then I had to give a civics lesson suing the president, governor and mayor to give these people a key word they could understand. Sometimes I sounded smarty-pants or disgusted. Shocking to the wonkeratti, I know.
Once, my assistant asked, “Do people ever get pissed off at you?” and I told her the truth–No, they thank me. They did. Because they don’t teach history or civics anymore. And esp. not in schools underfunded by the OK Republics.
Kids don’t need to know this crap to make AYP (Annual Yearly Progress).
Just reading and math.
Way Cool Larry: “I hate to write off a whole state, but is there ANYTHING worthwhile there at all? I can’t think of anything.”
Au contraire, mon amis. C’est moi.
icenine: Thanks for explaining the conservative push on the way this thing was given. The Republics here DO absolutely hate the teacher’s union, which isn’t even a real union, because the OEA will never join the AFL-CIO. The general argument here is that if churches ran things, kids would know shit. About abstinence, how friendly T-Rex was with the kiddies riding him to Sunday School and how coloreds are dark because they are inferior.
This group also didn’t note that there a large percentage of kids in this state home schooled or Xian schooled. And they’ll never see this as a reason to increase funding of public education.
I’ll bet if this test were given to most Americans, the results would be the same. Maybe a little better in some places but my Seattle experience taught me that Americans don’t know shit about their country’s government or history. How many of them think that the Ten Commandments have some connection to the Constitution? Republics wouldn’t have a change at the ballot box if most Americans weren’t dumb shits.
Atlantic Ocean has the best regonition amongst respondents?
Merikuns skillz at geography must be commended. If the Tejas home skool books haven’t re-written the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of Texas yet (where you can dill baby drill), then there is something wrong with America.
#8 - In Minnesota, five and a half.
icenine: they were open-answer questions. The article points out that these are harder than multiple choice. The charts at the end are for the most common answers. It’s not the list of options.
Some of the “correct answers” were a bit dubious. For example, do you really think that George W. Bush was in charge?
the problem child: No, you don’t get multiple choices. Which brings to mind why some of the questions have so few distinct answers.
For instance, the question “What are the two major political parties in the United States?” is reported as being answered “Democrat and Republican” by 43%, “Communist and Republican” by 11% and “I don’t know” by 46%. Nothing about this makes sense.
1) The 46% of ‘know-nothings’ is WAY too high. Even if you don’t know the author of the Declaration of Independence or the first President, there is NO escaping constant, 24-7 political debates on TV, on the Web, or between members of one’s community. And they will almost always have the names of the parties in them. The answer to this question is part of the passively acquired background knowledge of Americana - no one would ever need to look it up or get it taught to them unelss they watch no television, listen to no radio, and have no knowledge or memory of last year’s elections. It’s close to impossible that this could be the case for 460 kids randomly selected of 1000.
2) There are no other options listed beyond these three. Given 1000 kids with such an APPARENT lack of standard knowledge, we should have gotten all sorts of options beyond “Communist and Republican.” For instance, Libertarians aren’t anywhere in there, and you’d think they would be, in such a red state. And what about “Socialists”? If so many kids had been indoctrinated by their folks to consider the Democratic Party “Communist,” then at least some tangible percentage would have had their parents use the word “Socialist.” Where is the comparable 10-11% listing the non-Republican party as “Socialist”?
3) All the options add up to 100%, as though no one answered anything beyond what got listed. This goes for every other question in the survey as well. No margin of error is listed.
4) The question actually has a wrong answer listed as correct: “Democrat and Republican.” The 43% of the “correct” answers make the same mistake. Either no one among the surveyed kids actually called the party “Democratic,” the same head came up with both the question and the answers, or the pollster lumped all variants of “Democrat” together into one. And if they did that, who knows what else they lumped in with what?
In short, I call bullshit on the entire test.
For my sins, I teach high school English in Oklahoma. I try, but they hug their ignorance to themselves like a warm blanket on a cold winter’s night. Catch that simile? English teacher.
The first of what should have been the next ten questions:
QUESTION
“Who was the mother of Jesus?”
CORRECT ANSWER
Mary
PERCENTAGE CORRECT
95%
etc
Instead of confirming that thing about “American values declining (you know, because the libs are taking over),” pollsters are lazily giving us data without meaningful context. I mean, aside from telling us it was Oklahoma.
The next ten questions should have been along the lines of:
“Who was the mother of Jesus?”
Xtianity questions would result in higher percentage of ‘correct’ answers.
BUT
Instead of confirming that thing about “American values declining (you know, because the libs are taking over),” pollsters are lazily giving us data without meaningful context.
well, look, who needs education when you can f**k your cousins-all of them-, eat big mac 3 times a day, shoot bazooka in your backyard, then die and go to Heaven to party with Jesus?
Way Cool Larry: Umm, look again. That’s six tenths of 1 percent getting 7 questions right. Those 6 out of a 1000 need to be airlifted out, quickly.
The first question is the hardest. I was reading it on a site that DI’NT HAVE THE ANSWERS RIGHT NEXT TO THE QUESTIONS, and I was like ’suprememe law?’ But once I figureed it out, I had all the rest 100%. AxmxZ: True. Thanks for looking at it.
According to their fancy chart exactly 110 students (no more, no less) from the 1000 called said the two major parties were Republican and Communist. The rest either got it right or said ‘I don’t know’ - No. Who would believe that? Fishy.
DustBowlBlues: Perhaps a part problem might lie with the instructional videos widely used throughout the Oklahoma Xtian
MadrassasHome-skoolin’ community?..Its not all bad news for Oklahoma. They have a new slogan–move to oklahoma, where your kid can be valedictorian.
Real Americans don’t need to know the details to love their country.
Norbert: Actually, no one got more than 7 of the 10 right. Apparently, in Oklahoma, once you take seven questions of a test, narcolepsy kicks in.
AxmxZ: It’s been four years since I’ve taken mine, but when I got the sixth one correct (6/6!) they stopped the test and made me a Murican. Sucks that you had to go to 10.
the problem child: The citizenship test is not multiple choice, you are correct.