A new survey reports that just one in three Americans would pass a citizenship test. Only 13 percent knew that the Constitution was ratified in 1788, not 1776. More than two-thirds were unsure of which states comprised the original 13 colonies. Less than a quarter could identify the reason we fought the British.  

Still, today’s test-takers can hold their heads high. They are no more no more ignorant than their grandparents. Americans always have flunked tests of historical facts.

The first large-scale history exam was administered in 1917. High school students — the elite who made it that far in 1917 — yanked the Articles of Confederation from the 18th century and plunked them in the middle of the Confederacy. They confused Jefferson Davis with Thomas Jefferson, and stared with bafflement at 1846, the beginning of the war with Mexico. “Surely a grade of 33 in 100 on the simplest and most obvious facts of American history,” the testers hissed, “is not a record in which any high school can take great pride.”

In 1943, a test of 7,000 college students found them to be “all too ignorant of American history,” a finding recycled by the New York Times in 1976 in time to rain on the bicentennial parade: “Times Test Shows Knowledge of American History Limited.” Subsequent tests, such as one given to students in 2000, showed scant improvement.

Why, then, do Americans of all ages and generations do so poorly recalling historical facts from memory? One reason people look dumb is that the tests are constructed to make them look so. ...