the making of questions

First, an announcement: the new Kindle version of Think Like a Teacher is now out.

Today is the start of app development. The app: Do You Deserve to Vote? It will deal with topics like:

1. Do you have a more-than-basic grasp of English?
2. Do you have a more-than-basic education?
3. Can you think logically?
4. How much do you know about civics?
5. Can you pass a basic, stripped-down citizenship test?
6. How much do you know about current politicians' stands on today's major issues?

The app is an expression of my frustration about who exactly deserves to vote in national elections. When I first talked about this question of "deserving to vote," I got pushback in the comments about how my thoughts amounted to something unconstitutional. Fine—I concede all of my commenters' points. Despite the fact that even Thomas Jefferson himself expressed a strong preference for an educated electorate and not a nation of emotionally incontinent morons, I will grant, for the sake of argument, that allowing the morons to vote is somehow healthier for the country as a whole (it isn't, but I'll grant the point anyway). So since I'll never become god-emperor of the US, I am instead making this app to give people an idea of whether—according to quasi-Jeffersonian standards—they really deserve to be casting a vote.

And yes, I realize that the label "quasi-Jeffersonian" may be playing fast and loose with both language and history. I have done no deep research into what exactly Jefferson meant by "educated" when he expressed his preference for an educated electorate. But at a guess, the polymath who founded the University of Virginia would have wanted people to know at least the basics. So when someone asks, "How educated are you?", they're asking both How much do you know? and How well can you think? I think Thomas Jefferson would have agreed with at least that.

To that end, using the above six questions as a guide, I'll be developing a set of twenty or more questions for each topic. Nothing too complicated or abstruse: I won't ask, for example, "What year was the 16th Amendment passed, and what was the amendment about?" (I had to look that up just now.) To give you an example of the questions I would call "basic," watch any KeroNgb video on YouTube. That guy's asking simple stuff like, "How many letters are there in the English alphabet?" and "Name two countries outside of North America" and "How many stripes are on the American flag"? and "How many minutes are in a quarter of an hour?" Basic stuff that any elementary school kid should know. 

Making these questions might take me into the beginning of February.