Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Civil What?

The 7th graders were supposed to take an exam on Ancient China. One of the test questions reads:

Confucius wanted men to take the Civil ________________________ Exam to see who would make a good public official.

The answers from students include:

-Rights
-War
-Society
-ity
-ian
-man

I don't understand it. We studied the Civil Service Exam in some depth, and most of the kids did quite well on the rest of the test. I guess this is proof that some test-takers never look beyond the first few words of the question. This is right up there with the large group of kids who said that a group of monks will live together in a community called a Montessori.

1 comment:

Wingnut said...

It's a common problem that in fill-in-the-blank questions, people look only at the words immediately surrounding the blank. When all you see is "Civil ___" putting in words like "Rights" or "Raw" is perfectly obvious.