There's a new Pew Poll out

which rePublicans have taken as their own, as proving their superiority.  Since they hate so much Democrats doing it, I kinda wondered. . .   But then I remembered: IOKIYAR. . . .

And what they're puffing themselves up about?  They did better on a 13 question phone poll.  (I took it, got a hundred percent, but it didn't make me feel especially terrific.  First grade questions, lol!)  What the poll revealed, to me, was how badly we need some actual edumacation in this country.

This is the poll if you want to take it: 

Take the Quiz!

The other thing that puzzled me was *that* coupled with *this* --

http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/22/science-say-gop-voters-better-informed-open-minded/#ixzz1stzk1ZVV

Excerpt: On eight of 13 questions about politics, Republicans outscored Democrats by an average of 18 percentage points, according to a new Pew survey titled “Partisan Differences in Knowledge.” The Pew survey adds to a wave of surveys and studies showing that GOP-sympathizers are better informed, more intellectually consistent, more open-minded, more empathetic and more receptive to criticism than their fellow Americans who support the Democratic Party. [my empahsis]

 There doesn't appear to be any back up for this claim, and I *did* look.  Just repeats of the original post claiming same. 

So what we have is: 13 questions, and maybe five minutes time (Is that stretching it?  I dunno.) versus this: an in depth, twenty plus year study. . . . 

Study: Whiny Kids Become Republicans

From the Toronto Star:

Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.
At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals.
The study from the Journal of Research Into Personality isn’t going to make the UC Berkeley professor who published it any friends on the right. Similar conclusions a few years ago from another academic saw him excoriated on right-wing blogs, and even led to a Congressional investigation into his research funding.
But the new results are worth a look. In the 1960s Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids’ personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. There’s no reason to think political bias skewed the ratings — the investigators were not looking at political orientation back then. Even if they had been, it’s unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea about their political leanings.
A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.
The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective. [emphasis mine]

The original story from the Star is no longer available -- I picked this source because she has the most complete quote.