1 Which document is considered a primary source?

Correct answer: 4. Each individual has to be the final arbiter of what to believe. One has to become the expert at weighing and sifting for inconsistencies in books, newspapers, encyclopedias, and even in primary sources.

2 Which title best completes the partial outline below?

2 Which events indicate the need to take an active role in checking the quality and content of your own education?

To ignite the spark of learning, students need to be nudged toward taking responsibility for their own future. They need to learn why it is in their own best interest to become self-regulated learners.

3 Which Neolithic Revolution development led to the other three?

3 When one invents something, who benefits from the wealth created?

Correct answer: 4. The domestication of plants and animals that made incrementally more time available for people to spend doing other things created wealth. Wealth can lead to improvement in the quality of life.

Whenever one creates a more efficient way of doing the same amount of work, the time saved becomes wealth that can be used to do other things. Wealth, when created, belongs to everyone—employees, customers, and shareholders. Increased wealth improves the quality to life of everyone.

When an inventor, an entrepreneur, an artist creates something others value, he can become wealthy, but that wealth immediately is distributed to others through services rendered, products bought, or savings invested.

4 •The Ganges River is sacred to people practicing Hinduism.

• Shinto shrines are usually located near mountains or lakes.

• The Jordan River is a site of many Christian baptisms.

Which conclusion is most valid based on these statements related to belief systems?

4 From personal experience, which statement can one justify?

Correct answer: 4. A simple fabric underlies diverse cultural beliefs to form the minimum requirements of all civil society.

One thread, humility, comes from understanding you are not always correct, and another thread, reciprocity, comes from appreciation that others, like you, are as acutely interested in understanding the world more accurately, the better to plan their own future.

Culture is like the pile of a carpet, varying in many different ways, held together by humility and reciprocity as the underlying warp and weft.

Base your answer to question 5 on the illustration below and on your knowledge of social studies.

5 Which element of civilization is most clearly shown in this Maya artwork?

5 Which statement is true about arbitrary distinctions?

Correct answer: 4. Class is an arbitrary abstraction often used to obfuscate that people deal with each other individually, one-on-one, and behavior that matters individually becomes behavior that matters collectively.

6 Which achievements are most closely associated with the Tang and Song dynasties of China?

6 Copyrights are designed to?

Correct answer: 4. Inventions benefit all society, creating new wealth by improving providing goods and services to people. In our time, governments make bargains called patents and copyrights with inventors and artists that work to the benefit of each. Creators receive the profits of their work for a time and then those creations are made available to the rest of society to be further refined and developed.

In recent time changes have been made to copyright law to favor descendents instead of creators, jeopardizing the mutually beneficial relationship with society.

7 Korea has frequently served as a cultural bridge between

7 Where do cultural traditions fit in governance?

Correct answer: 1. A culture can govern based on shared traditions, whether they are religious or social, but when a culture tries to impose that tradition on others who do not follow those traditions or beliefs, the only options are to convince them to adopt those beliefs or to rule by force.

A society of diverse cultures is likely to be mores stable if it is based on conclusions developed from individual experience that leads to a common result.

What conclusions can be developed from your personal experience that others from different cultures are also likely to conclude?

8 Which institution served as the primary unifying force in medieval western Europe?

8 Which institution served better organizing society to solve its problems?

Correct answer: 4. Government is a creation of individuals designed to work on their behalf, but what powers should a government have, and what checks and balances are effective.

Each century since the middle ages has emphasized one type of organizing system to address social concerns, and each has left problems for the next century to clean up:

• 1500s – Religion
• 1600s – Absolutism
• 1700s – Reason
• 1800s – Industrialism
• 1900s – Centralized with mass communications

The problem is not the unifying force, but creating a self-correcting process that is unlikely to be hijacked or sent permanently down a self-defeating path.

Base your answer to question 9 on the map below and on your knowledge of social studies.

Newcomers in the Roman World, c. AD 526

9 Which conclusion about the Roman world around AD 526 can be drawn from the information on this map?

9 As cultures have organized into ever increasing size across history, which size works best?

Correct answer: 1. Across history cultures have organized into entities ever increasing in size—towns, provinces, states, and nations, facilitated by better communications and support structures. But nations are a new phenomenon, not necessarily well suited to advance their citizens or society.

10 Which change to Christian church practice was suggested by Martin Luther?

10 For political decisions, who is most trustworthy?

Correct answer: 4. Experts of any flavor, whether religious, political, scientific, or other, are obliged to express what they know so that other ordinary individuals can understand and validate it for themselves. There is no special knowledge. There is no hiding behind degrees, white coats, or clerical collars.

11 The trans-Saharan trade carried out by West African civilizations was primarily based on an exchange of

11 What is the goal of money?

Correct answer: 3. Economics is often misunderstood—reduced to examination of money as the medium of exchange, but money goals are not usually the goals of individual transactions; goals should be understood according to what each individual wishes to accomplish. Understanding that helps one understand that self-interest is different than selfishness.

Base your answer to question 12 on the map below and on your knowledge of social studies.

12 Based on the information provided by this map, which statement about urban areas between 650 and 1500 is accurate?

12 What would rival the unsettling changes of rural workers moving to factories in urban areas between 1875 and 1925?

Correct answer: 4. The agrarian revolution, the steam revolution, the scientific revolution, and the computer revolution have had profound but temporary effects on cultures.

Between 1875 and 1925 was a mass migration from farms to urban areas, where manufacturing and retail brought income to families.

A hundred years later a new transition brought a new wave of uncertainty as computer automation and easy transport began to change manufacturing retail base to service and knowledge as the means to bring income into families.

How did politicians try to use the changes to gain political power?

13 China’s image of itself as the Middle Kingdom is associated with

13 Who validates governments?

Correct answer: 2. Individuals create their governments and recreate them in every generation. Individuals of any culture depend on an accurate understanding of the world about them to be able to make decisions all citizens of that culture are required to make.

When rulers over any culture abuse their authority over individuals of that culture, mechanisms are needed to peacefully correct that abuse or citizens may try other means to recover.

14 Which factor most influenced the development of diverse cultures in pre-Columbian South America?

14 What is society?

Correct answer: 3. Society is the minimal behavior at the edge where two or more individuals or cultures meet.

To avoid moral relativism which can occur whenever cultures meet, and which can lead to Machiavellian “might makes right,” how can those cultures establish a mutually beneficial process of peaceful problem resolution?

Base your answer to question 15 on the map below and on your knowledge of social studies.

15 Based on the information shown on this map, most manufactured goods were produced in

15 The commercial marketplace has helped improve the quality of life of more people than any other economic system because:

Correct answer: 4. Development of commercial marketplace occurs in several stages. Its growth is facilitated by liberty that encourages division of labor, resources that include capital, and a ready market.

Protectionist policies at the outset, can favor start up of industry that otherwise would be inefficient, however, in mature markets, protectionism negatively affect individuals, forcing them to pay higher prices for goods and services than they normally would.

16 What was a key characteristic of an absolute monarchy in the 16th and 17th centuries?

16 Can individuals safely leave their governance up to others to solve society’s problems?

Correct answer: 1. Each century since the middle ages has attempted to organize to address social issues. First religion-based, then autocratic, then science-based, then technology-based, and, in the last century, centralized communications based, all with limited success.

17 The signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 and the Glorious Revolution in 1688 were key events in English history because they resulted in

17 The primary purpose of teaching citizenship should be to:

Correct answer: 3. What is the purpose of citizenship? For classical Greeks citizenship required drill to function as a team in the chorus or on the battlefield. For the classical Romans it required the study of Rhetoric to put thoughts in order and present them compellingly to others in political debate. Should citizenship try to create competent individuals, docile compliant citizens, or something else?

Base your answer to question 18 on the passage below and on your knowledge of social studies.

. . . The Mongols made no technological breakthroughs, founded no new religions, wrote few books or dramas, and gave the world no new crops or methods of agriculture. Their own craftsmen could not weave cloth, cast metal, make pottery, or even bake bread. They manufactured neither porcelain nor pottery, painted no pictures, and built no buildings. Yet, as their army conquered culture after culture, they collected and passed all of these skills from one civilization to the next. . . .

— Jack Weatherford

18 This passage leads to the conclusion that the Mongols

Correct answer: 3. One can learn from others, but one has to be open to learn from them.

We call it humility when one understands that one can be wrong, that at any time there one may discover a better way to do things, and that the process of self-correction must always be preserved.

We call it reciprocity when one recognizes that others live their lives as acutely as we live our own, and that they too may seek better understanding of the world around them.

All successful cultures in one way or another believe that one does not do to others what one does not want done to oneself.

19 Many Enlightenment philosophers used reason to

19 Reason is best used to

Correct answer: 4. Reason has been misused to persecute witches and commit genocide against millions.

Reason is not how we think; it is one tool we use, in concert with others, to check our work.

20 The unification of Germany under Otto von Bismarck demonstrates the

20 The nation state is:

The nation state is a recent form of government that is owed no special allegiance. It is a creation of individuals to be used to help individuals, but one that equally easily can be abused by individuals.

21 What was a result of the Industrial Revolution in Europe?

21 Commercial marketplace progressed because of:

Correct answer: 4. The commercial marketplace blossomed in several stages:

1. Development of monetary interest,
2. Development of the limited liability corporation to spread and limit risk,
3. Development of vertically organized enterprise,
4. Development of non-animal based power,
5. Advance of division of labor brought about by interchangeable parts, and
6. The advent of rational accounting

22 One reason the Suez Canal has been of strategic importance to countries other than Egypt was that the canal

22 Adam Smith opposed mercantilism because:

Correct answer: 4. Mercantilists believed that wealth was a zero-sum game where one country’s wealth necessarily came at the expense of another. Show how trade can be an instrument to benefit individuals or benefit the state and that trade that fosters a healthy middle class improves the quality of life for all and helps maintain the mutual peace.

23 Much of which area of the world came under European colonial control in the 19th century?

23 Colonialism:

Correct answer: 2. Colonialism was a temporary perturbation of commercial marketplaces made possible by a monopoly assignment by a government to a private company, like the Dutch East India Company.

Colonialism is necessarily a two-way street. Colonialism would not have been possible without protectionism or without the tacit complicity of segments of the colonized country, and cultural exchange necessarily travels in both directions.

24 A similarity between the Sepoy Rebellion in India and the Boxer Rebellion in China is that both were

24 Monopoly rights granted by governments

Correct answer: 1. In early attempts at international trade, governments colluded with business to create monopoly companies that overstepped the commercial into the military. How would open commercial competition have helped avoid colonial revolutions?

Base your answer to question 25 on the passage below and on your knowledge of social studies.

Observation of a Soldier in World War I
Private Archie Surfleet, February 8th, 1918 —
We have been in camp near the wood at écurie for some days now and a more miserable existence it would be hard to imagine. There is nothing but unrest and uncertainty and everyone here is absolutely fed up to the teeth.

— Malcolm Brown, Tommy Goes to War

25 Which hypothesis can best be supported by this passage?

25 Peace:

Correct answer: 4. Both pacifists and generals agree that war is a nasty place to be. But peace isn’t simply the absence of war; it is the absence of the need for war. Sometimes simply enforcing peace legitimizes oppression.

What is worth fighting for? A nation? A principle? A process? A tradition? A religion?

The courage to stand up for such things comes from mastering when and why such things are worthwhile.

26 One reason the League of Nations failed as a world organization was that it

26 Peace:

Correct answer: 1. Peace is not the absence of war; it is the absence of the need for war. It is a process that allows for problem resolution short of fighting.

People who favor enforced peace absent a mechanism for problem resolution satisfactory to both sides stand for oppression.

27 Japan’s invasion of China in 1937 and Germany’s attack on Poland in 1939 led directly to

27 National misbehavior:

Correct answer: 3. Appeasement of Hitler by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was supposed to lead to “peace in our time” but it led, instead, to war. Addressing misbehavior requires understanding what misbehavior is, even across cultures. In the last century, millions died in war, and because other nations sat by the sidelines when facing down oppression would have saved innocent lives. Even today United Nations rules make it difficult to oppose state-sponsored abuse of citizens.

28 The Nuremberg Trials are considered an important event in the 20th century because they

28 Human rights:

Correct answer: 3. Human rights are not created by law, but may be recognized and set into law. Rights come not from natural law, or from cultural tradition, but are deduced from patterns of experience commonly accessible to all and able to be justified by individuals to apply equally to themselves and to all other individuals.

29 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was initially formed to

29 When governments collapse a political vacuum can be created that:

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created for defensive purposes but has acted in areas outside its physical boundaries in the interests of world stability.

30 What was one social change Mao Zedong instituted in China after 1949?

30 Which meaning of equality works most reliably?

Correct answer: 4. Equality of opportunity does not guarantee success, but it gives each generation the opportunity to climb out of poverty. Enforced quality of result rewards those who do not try and penalizes those who add to the quality of life for all.

Base your answers to questions 31 and 32 on the cartoon below and on your knowledge of social studies.

31 This 1989 cartoon suggests that the governments of both China and East Germany

31 The freedom to offend others:

Correct answer: 2. The freedom to express an opinion—to tell someone something they may not wish to hear—is the most fundamental principle in society because people—and governments—can think they are correct when they are mistaken and to be continuously successful society requires the constant opportunity for the smallest voice to try to convince others of a better way to do things.

As a corollary, the right to speak one’s mind does not imply the necessity to do so. No one deserves to be harangued during occasions of peaceful reflection.

32 Which event in China is symbolized by the “Lady with the Light” in this 1989 cartoon?

32 Which of the following is true about the Declaration of Human Rights:

Correct answer: 1. People often claim “rights” but seldom justify them. Likewise, people seldom claim “responsibilities.” Where do rights come from? Does claiming something to be a right make it one? Does popularity make something a right? Is there a difference between a right and a sensible practice? Is liberty a right? Freedom? Freedom of speech? The freedom to offend?

33 Which statement about the United Nations is a fact rather than an opinion?

33 The United Nations:

Correct answer: 2. A critical flaw in the United Nations shields the internal affairs of members from most scrutiny such that its charter behaves as the national leader full employment act. No matter how a leader assumes power, or stays in power, legitimacy is almost automatically assumed in the United Nations. This borders on the absurd when autocratic rulers who violate the United Nations own Declaration of Human Rights are put on the Human Rights Commission.

Base your answer to question 34 on the chart below and on your knowledge of social studies.

34 Which conclusion about South Africa’s economy can be drawn from this chart?

34 South Africa’s economy:

Correct answer: 2. Economic equality in South Africa has not been achieved not because businesses are residually unethical, but because there are so few businesses altogether.

Political leaders heap social mandates and environmental restrictions on businesses and on individuals who would buy things. Restrictions make it hard to build power plants. Labor laws make it hard to fire people.

35 Which document is most closely associated with the Arab-Israeli conflict?

35 A nation’s process of peaceful problem resolution:

Correct answer: 3. If no political group within a territory can be trusted to govern with impartiality in the interest of those who live there, should a nation be created at all, or, instead, should the territory be governed by outside administrators until the current generation will no longer poison support for peaceful problem resolution.

36 “Reliance on Imported Oil Raises Concerns in China, Europe, and the United States”

“Coca-Cola Accused of Wasting Precious Water in India”

“Competition for Control of Cobalt Mines Causes Violence in Congo”

These headlines best illustrate the economic concept of

36 If sometimes we think we are correct when we are mistaken, a useful check on one’s thinking might be:

Correct answer: 1. The concept of one’s place in time is a useful tool to check one's conclusions. Sighting from the past, through the present, to the future generates a sense of perspective for decision-making.

Examining what has happened over time leads to humility about current interpretations of past events, just as past interpretations of what has gone before have been colored by their times.

It also leads one to recognize that scarcity isn’t always permanent, and accurate market pricing helps allocate resources to, if possible, reduce and find alternatives to work around that scarcity.

37 Rapid industrialization in developing nations has often resulted in

37 A growing gap between the rich and the poor:

Correct answer: 2. The problems of rapid industrialization in the 1800s cannot be equated to the current industrialized culture where entrepreneurship may have made some people wealthy while along their way they helped to raise the standard of living of many who otherwise would have been left in extreme poverty.

Invention and entrepreneurship has increased the size of the economic pie of which everyone may partake. Along the way, public schools, advocated by Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, have led to the circumstance where poverty in one generation of a family can be wiped out in the second.

The gap between the richest of the rich and the poor is less important than the opportunity the poor have to better themselves and the safety net available to them during economic transitions.

38 One way in which the Aswan Dam in Egypt and the Three Gorges Dam in China are similar is that both

38 Large public works

Correct answer: 4. Public works created by large centralized governments sometimes create unintended consequences. Creating projects at the lowest possible level of government capable of addressing a problem can sometimes mitigate those problems. The rural electrification of America created many hydroelectric projects of different sizes.

Base your answer to question 39 on the passage below and on your knowledge of social studies.

. . . The horrible truth is that failure to eradicate [destroy] the root causes of terrorism is almost certain to extend the Age of Terrorism, it is not clear that they really can be eradicated. To appease the extremists might be easy but may not work. To allow them to win would be to accept the supremacy of evil. To promote democracy and open government might be the ultimate solution, but it stands on a shaky conceptual foundation of untested assumptions about the nature of the world and diverse cultures.

Unfortunately, the world is at a point where it can see the danger from terrorism but not the cure. Worse still, a cure may not exist.

— Steven Metz, “Can Terrorism Be Cured?” Project Syndicate

39 The author of this 2006 passage concludes that terrorism

39 Where different cultures come in contact

Correct answer: 4. Technological revolutions in communications and travel have put different cultures in much closer contact, raising the question of how one should resolve differences between cultures. Moral relativism is ineffective because however are decisions made within a culture, the rules of another culture do not apply when they conflict.

If one cannot turn to traditions within a culture for resolution, and if one cannot turn to natural law, since one opinion of natural law may differ from another, individuals who interact have to manufacture a way to bridge the gap between them absent shared values.

One can manufacture the minimum behavior necessary for society because from one’s personal experience one can generate conclusions someone from an entirely different culture can reach from entirely different personal experience.

The fabric of society that underlies and ties together different cultures has one thread of humility—that comes from the recognition that because one has been wrong in the past, one just might be wrong again sometime—and another thread of reciprocity—the sense that other people live their lives as acutely as you do, looking to understand the world as accurately as possible, the better to plan for the future.

40 One way in which the actions of Alexander the Great, Saladin, and Shaka Zulu are similar is that each implemented

40 Historical events:

The correct answer: 2. Then was then, and now is now. Should people be held hostage to history that they had no part in creating? What is the value of history except to warn us toward or away from options for the future?

41 In the traditional Hindu caste system and in the social hierarchy of colonial Latin America, the status of a person was usually determined by

41 Comparing liberty and equality:

Correct answer: 4. Equality of opportunity is different from equality of result. And across history, liberty has generated more progress than enforced equality.

42 One way in which the travels of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta are similar is that each

42 What standard of justice ought to apply when one culture’s traditions oppress its citizens?

Correct answer: 1. Multiculturalists argue that each culture is different and ought to be judged according to its own standards. In the moral relativism this implies, what standard of justice should apply where one culture must interact with another?

Base your answer to question 43 on the graphic organizer below and on your knowledge of social studies.

43 Which title best completes this graphic organizer?

43 What has been learned about civilizations in the past?

Correct answer: 4. Why do civilizations rise? Why do they fall? Accordingly, where do you place our own? Do you suppose an age ever considers itself a dark age? Why not?

Base your answer to question 44 on the passage below and on your knowledge of social studies.

. . . The split arose from a dispute over who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad after his death in A.D. 632. Some followers believed his successor should be chosen by tribal consensus, and they named one of Muhammad’s inner circle as the first caliph, or spiritual leader. But others thought the successor should come directly from the Prophet’s family, namely his cousin and son- in-law Ali. . . .

Source: National Geographic, June 2004

44 The situation described in this passage led to the

44 Which of the following show that religions have cultural and political consequences?

Correct answer: 4. Besides the purely personal, religious acts are political acts that affect others of the current generation and many future generations. Different religions, like different cultures, can be held accountable for how they choose to interact with others. They are not shielded from scrutiny simply because their beliefs are their own.

Base your answer to question 45 on the wood block print below and on your knowledge of social studies.

45 During which period of Japanese history did the changes shown in this wood block print occur?

45 Which events signify the advantages of cultural cross-pollination?

Correct answer: 4. Other cultures may sometimes constitute a threat, but they always constitute an opportunity to check one’s work. If, in our culture, democracy codifies the opportunity for the smallest voice to be heard, because it may suggest a better way of doing things, then other cultures offer the same opportunity.

46 Between 1300 and 1600, which economic system began to develop as a result of the transformation in global trade?

46 What is required for a successful commercial marketplace?

Correct answer: 1. In the 1500s, the Dutch provinces were an unlikely place for the development of the commercial marketplace, but within a hundred years, the standard of living of its populace had multiplied. Why?

It declined as a world power a hundred years later. Why?

47 The combined usage of the caravel, compass, and astrolabe in the late 1400s helped bring about the

47 Innovation and entrepreneurship depend upon:

Correct answer: 4. Innovation and entrepreneurship have profoundly influenced the advance and retrenchment of cultures. What conditions have traditionally led to advance and what conditions have traditionally led to decline?

48 Which time period is most closely associated with these characteristics?

• Focus on individual achievement
• Use of classical Greek and Roman ideas
• Artistic works of Leonardo da Vinci

48 Linear perspective was a painting technique introduced in the 1300s that parallels what tool of thought?

Correct answer: 2. Art in the early renaissance introduced linear perspective that soon made its way into literature as point of view, and into thought as a check on one's thinking. As a tool of thought, what more recent tools for thought have been adopted, and why might they be valuable?

49

• Romans destroy the temple in Jerusalem.
• British officials partition India.
• Hutus and Tutsis fight in Rwandan civil war.

One way in which these events are similar is that each resulted in the

49 The idea that there might be a better way:

Correct answer: 4. Civilization is tissue thin, and it is up to every individual to understand the minimum behavior civilization requires, what constitutes a threat against it, and to stand up to defend it.

First and foremost, civilization requires the willingness to admit there might be a better way, and to be open to criticism, even though it might come across as offensive.

Simply because society allows the freedom to offend, does not imply the obligation to do so.

50 Which of these groups were the major supporters of 20th-century communist revolutions?

50 Based on the ideas of Karl Marx, Communism:

Correct answer: 4. Karl Marx wrote in the 1840s in a world quite different from our own. Marx justified his positions by the selective use of fact, and proposed a system that did not remove competition, but instead hid it underneath a veil of government. Rather than creating a system that enabled the individual, the Communism that followed from Marx repressed the individual and initiative and undermined the quality of life for millions of citizens caught under it.