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I just did the quiz and answered 36/60 questions correctly -- 60%.
Average score for this quiz, during September 74.5%
Average score since September 18, 2007 74.5%

So, I did better than some of the college students, but lots of people did better than me! I have to say, that most of the facts in the quiz are not something I need to live my life from day-to-day and it's been a long time since I had any kind of social studies class! LOL!

I'm just curious what our scores would be.

By Amecmom on Monday, September 24, 2007 - 10:53 pm:

43/60 boy was that hard! When I looked at the answers, I realized that I could have gotten a few more right if I'd payed more attention.
Great quiz!
Ame

By Dawnk777 on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 - 07:58 am:

DH got 44/60, or 73.3% He was acting rather smug last night! LOL! Between the two of us, we would have probably gotten close to 100%, though, because he missed questions that I'd gotten right.

By Ginny~moderator on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 - 09:01 am:

85% for me, and I did an "oh - duh" on some I missed when I was shown the correct answers.

By Dawnk777 on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 - 09:31 am:

Wow, Ginny! You are good!

Emily did it last night and got 24/60.

By Unschoolmom on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 - 10:53 am:

You answered 37 out of 60 correctly — 61.67 %

Keep in mind I'm a Canuck though! I have one objection however, the War of 1812 was not a stalemate for the US. You guys invaded, we fought you off. You lost!

By Ginny~moderator on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 - 11:21 am:

Actually - I'm a history buff and a political junky, so if I don't do well on a civics test I must really be doing something wrong.

Dawn, our version of the war of 1812 is that the British were stopping U.S. ships and impressing U.S. citizens into the British navy (which was also busy fighting Napoleon), the Brits invaded the U.S. (and burned down the White House), and we fought the Brits to a standstill (partly at the Battle of New Orleans), the fighting gradually stopped, and the diplomats worked out the rest. I would assume that at some point fighting in Canada took place, but it is not a highlight of the U.S. version of the history of that war. Mostly, I suspect, the Brits didn't really think of the U.S. as a seriously sovereign nation and saw no problem with treating sailors on U.S. ships as British citizens and confiscating U.S. ships that were allegedly supplying the French (and why not, as the U.S. was not at war with France), especially as the need was so great in the war against Napoleon (the Brits were impressing people off the streets in English cities and towns also). The final result of that war was that the British government did change its attitude about the sovreignity of the U.S.

By Unschoolmom on Saturday, September 29, 2007 - 07:01 am:

It's funny Ginny how a border can make all the difference in how a historical event is interpretted. Thanks for the information! Sounds like more solid support for the 'standstill' position.

By Ginny~moderator on Saturday, September 29, 2007 - 09:59 am:

Dawn, history is not only written by the victor, it is also written from the viewpoint of the writer. Certainly the British view of the War of Independence/Revolutionary War was (and may still be, for all I know) a war of traitorous rebels against legal authority, where the U.S. view is a rightful revolution against tyranny. In that same war, from the U.S. view Tory supporters of the tyrant were rightfully expelled from what became the U.S. Those same Tories went to Canada as refugees from rioting mobs who stole their property and forced them to leave their homes, and became good Canadian citizens.

Somewhere in between either "side" of an event is the truth, or at least the possibility of a factual recounting of the perspectives of all parties, but it takes anywhere from a couple of generations to a few centuries for that to evolve. Heck, in the U.S., where we all live in the same country, we are still fighting the Civil War about 150 years later, and the "truth" of that war tends to depend on where you and/or your ancestors lived and, in the case of Southerners, whether the ancestors were slave owners, not slave owners, or slaves.

By Pamt on Saturday, September 29, 2007 - 10:14 am:

Yeah, you know that in the south the Civil War is referred to as the "War of Northern Aggression."

By Pamt on Saturday, September 29, 2007 - 10:17 am:

I should have added...I haven't taken the quiz (no time right now, but I will later). However, I expect to do poorly on it. History is my Achilles heel. I am more of a science and literature girl. I never took elective history classes in high school or college. The problem is that I had so many teacher reduce history to facts and dates. Now as an adult I have realized how exciting and wonderful history is! I have really gotten into reading biographies and went through a kick of reading about first wives like Martha Washington and Jane Adams. I learned so much and it was fascinating! I just hate that some bad teachers squelched that along the way.

By Dawnk777 on Saturday, September 29, 2007 - 11:51 am:

I'm sorry Pam. History can be fascinating! I think Ginny should be our teacher! LOL! Ginny, your post was quite interesting! Now, I need to get off the computer, so I can finish the books I have from the library, so I can get one on Martha Washington or Jane Adams.

By Ginny~moderator on Saturday, September 29, 2007 - 01:45 pm:

Try "Dearest Friend", by Lynne Whithey, a biography of Abigail Adams. I remember it as being a good book, a good love story, and a lot of history. While I'm at the library I'll look for a new book I read recently about Martha Washington & Abigail Adams & Dolly Madison and their times, as I can't recall the title and can't find it on Amazon.

I love reading history (mostly in the form of well written, well researched historical fiction, because for me it's a way to find out how we got from "there" to "here". (It helps that I'm one of those rapid reader people - not because I worked at it, I just am - so I can read the average novel in a day or two before and after work.)

By Pamt on Saturday, September 29, 2007 - 02:22 pm:

See that shows my history--LOL. I MEANT Abigail Adams! Ginny that book, Dearest Friend, is specifically the one I read. Abigail and John had quite the torrid love affair. I couldn't believe some of the letters that they wrote to each other. And Ben Franklin? He was quite a scoundrel! I want to read about Dolley Madison too as she was mentioned in these other books and seems to be quite a lady. And George Washington--he was a really nice looking guy in his younger years and was so accomplished and way more amazing and impressive than I learned about in school.

By Ginny~moderator on Saturday, September 29, 2007 - 06:30 pm:

Yes, Pam, it was quite a love story - and unusual for that age, when so many marriages were arranged. On the other hand, Jane Adams was quite a remarkable woman too (though not a first lady). She was the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She founded Hull House in Chicago, one of the first (if not the first) "settlement houses" in the country, and worked in the slums of Chicago for most of her adult life. I grew up in Chicago, and Jane Adams was part of the history I learned about that city. Here's the Wikipedia bio about her: Jane Addams

By Ginny~moderator on Saturday, September 29, 2007 - 06:32 pm:

I am particularly fond of Abigail Adams because of her (pretty much ignored) admonition to John - "I desire you would remember the ladies", when John and others were working on the Constitution.