General Education Trivia Quizzes These trivia quizzes (see links at bottom of this page) are designed to give you a rough indication of how sound your background of general academic knowledge is. Each quiz covers all the categories of general academic knowledge, and each quiz asks you to recall only elementary and familiar facts from its category. Here's an example from the area of World History:
In what art, activity, craft, profession, or occupation did a 16th Century German named Martin Luther become most famous?
Obviously it is reasonable to expect anyone who has studied World History in high school to reel off an answer such as "Luther was a religious reformer" or "Luther tried to reform the Catholic Church."
All of the questions on these quizzes are similarly elementary questions from all the fields of general academic knowledge, so your scores on these quizzes can help you to assess the overall strength of your background knowledge and can help you identify areas where your knowledge is weak.
Here is a list of the areas of general knowledge covered on these quizzes:
There are two main sources for the questions in these quizzes:
1. Mythology and Folklore
2. Proverbs and Sayings
3. Idioms
4. World Literature, Philosophy, and Religion
5. Literature in English
6. English Grammar, Spelling, Punctuation, and Mechanics
7. Fine Arts (painting, music, acting, sculpture, movies, etc.)
8. World History before 1550
9. World History since 1550
10. American History before 1865
11. American History since 1865
12. World Politics
13. American Politics
14. World Geography
15. American Geography
16. Anthropology, Sociology, and Psychology
17. Business and Economics
18. Physical Sciences
19. Mathematics
20. Earth Sciences
21. Life Sciences
22. Medicine and Health
23. Inventions
24. Technology
25. The Bible
Hirsch, E.D. and others. The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 1988.Follow the links below to try these trivia quizzes.Wright, John W. and others. The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge. St. Martin's Press:
New York, 2004.
