All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
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Post #3663 was the civics test. I was impressed with everyone's scores. We're all above average. I sorta expected that, actually. But I wonder - those questions that you answered correctly, did you actually know the answer? Or did you figure it out?
Too often when people take multiple choice tests, they read the question, realize that they don't know the answer, and then they just pick a random answer without thinking further about it. Actually, the question usually has clues you can use to immediately eliminate one or more of the choices, and then weigh the remaining possibilities.
A good example is the question about the main issue in the 1858 Douglas/Lincoln debates. I didn't have the faintest idea. (If this were an essay question, I'd have to go for humor and hope the instructor was easy.) The choices offered included whether free African Americans were citizens, the morality of slavery, whether slavery would be allowed in new territories, or whether states have a right to leave the union.
Ok. My approach: The use of the phrase "African Americans" is odd. If it were a topic of the time, it would have been "freed slaves". This looks like it was just pulled out of the air to round out the choices. Eliminate it. The "morality" question is philosophical, and unlikely to be meaty enough for a debate, let alone the main issue. Eliminate it. The right to secession wasn't even an issue until long after the election. Eliminate it. That leaves "territories", which was a big deal at the time, and a safe issue. And the correct answer.
Another was the question about what is "expressly prohibited" by The Bill of Rights. Offerings were prayer in public school; discrimination based on race, sex, or religion; the ownership of guns by private individuals; establishing an official religion for the United States; and the president's vetoing a line item in a spending bill.
Now, there are lots of things prohibited in the Bill of Rights, including the quartering of soldiers in private homes, unreasonable search and seizure, cruel and unusual punishment, and so on. So this looks like an elimination exercise, complicated by the fact that there are lots more prohibitions in subsequent amendments (the Bill of Rights refers only to the original ten, but most people don't draw a line between the tenth and the subsequent, so it's hard to limit it).
Well, we can eliminate sexual discrimination right off - it was another 150 years before women got the vote and then another 50 years after that before women were considered real people. Anyone with half a brain knows about the gun thing. So there's two down. Prayer in schools was a Supreme Court decision after I graduated from high school, based on the first amendment, but not specifically addressed in the first amendment - and it's a battle still being fought, therefore it's not "expressly forbidden". That leaves the official religion thing and the line-item veto. If there is anything about the line-item veto, it would be in the body of the Constitution where the functions and responsibilities of the branches are defined, not in the Bill of Rights, so we are left with official religion as the likeliest answer, which is the correct answer.
You can do that kind of triage with almost all of the questions.
Are there any you'd like me to examine?
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I missed two questions: the one about Roosevelt and the Supreme Court, and the Puritan one. I didn't know the President could appoint additional justices until he got the votes he wanted. I eliminated that as a possibility because it seems like if they really could, a lot of Presidents would have done that by now (um, abortion?). But I didn't like any of the other choices, either, so I blew that one off.
The Puritan one, well, I'd like to argue that one with the writers of the test. Stressed the sinfulness of all humanity? Baloney! My grandmother's church was one of the last Puritan churches. They imported their ministers from Wales. I was christened Puritan. Yes, there was a belief in original sin, but they also stressed that it was possible to live without sin by rejecting temptation. That dour caricature is a baloney stereotype, even for the colonial Puritans.
I scored 31 of 33, 93.94%.
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