Big Brother. McCarthyism. The patience of Job.

Don't count on your typical teenager to nod knowingly the next time you drop a reference to any of these. A study out today finds that about half of 17-year-olds can't identify the books or historical events associated with them.

Twenty-five years after the federal "A Nation at Risk" report challenged U.S. public schools to raise the quality of education kids receive, the study finds that high schoolers still lack important historical and cultural underpinnings of "a complete education." And, its authors fear, the nation's current focus on improving children's basic reading and math skills in elementary school may only make matters worse, giving short shrift to the humanities — even if kids can read and do math.

"If you think that it matters whether or not kids have common historical touchstones and whether, at some level, we feel like members of a common culture, then familiarity with this knowledge matters a lot," says American Enterprise Institute researcher Rick Hess, who wrote the study.

Among 1,200 students surveyed:

• 43 percent knew the Civil War was fought between 1850 and 1900;

• 52 percent could identify the theme of "1984;"

• 51 percent knew that the controversy surrounding Sen. Joseph McCarthy focused on communism;

In all, students earned a C in history and an F in literature, though the survey suggests that students do well on topics that schools cover. For instance, 88 percent knew that the bombing of Pearl Harbor led the United States into World War II, and 97 percent could identify Martin Luther King Jr. as the author of the 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech.

But fewer (77 percent) knew that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" helped end slavery a century earlier.

"School has emphasized Martin Luther King and everybody teaches it and people are therefore learning it," says Chester Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank. "What a better thing it would be if people also had the Civil War part" and "the civil rights part, and the Harriet Tubman part and the 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' part."

The findings won't likely sit well with educators, who note that record numbers of students are taking college-level Advanced Placement (AP) history, literature and other courses in high school.

"Not all is woe in American education," says Trevor Packer of The College Board, which oversees AP.

The study's release Tuesday in Washington also serves as a sort of coming out for its sponsor, Common Core, a new non-partisan group pushing for the liberal arts in public school curricula. Its leadership includes a fifth-grade teacher, an author of history and science textbooks, a teachers' union leader and a former top official in both the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations.

Here are eight questions from the survey, and the percent of teens who answered correctly. Answers appear below.

1) WHEN DID COLUMBUS SAIL FOR THE NEW WORLD?

A. Before 1750

B. 1750-1800

C. 1800-1850

D. 1850-1900

E. 1900-1950

F. After 1950

2) WHEN WAS THE CIVIL WAR?

A. Before 1750

B. 1750-1800

C. 1800-1850

D. 1850-1900

E. 1900-1950

F. After 1950

3) WHICH PRESIDENT SAID, "ASK NOT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOU; ASK WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY"?

A. Richard Nixon

B. Theodore Roosevelt

C. Lyndon Johnson

D. John F. Kennedy

4) PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN WROTE ...

A. The Bill of Rights

B. Emancipation Proclamation

C. The Missouri Compromise

D. "Uncle Tom's Cabin"

5) WHAT EVENT LED DIRECTLY TO THE ENTRY OF THE UNITED STATES INTO THE SECOND WORLD WAR?

A) the sinking of the Lusitania

B) the German occupation of France

C) the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

D) The signing of a secret Nazi-Soviet pact

6) WHICH AMERICAN POET WROTE THE VOLUME OF POETRY "LEAVES OF GRASS", WHICH INCLUDES THE LINE "I CELEBRATE MYSELF, AND SING MYSELF"?

A. Robert Lowell

B. Edna St. Vincent Millay

C. Archibald MacLeish

D. Walt Whitman

7) IN THE BIBLE, JOB IS KNOWN FOR HIS:

A) skill as a builder

B) patience during suffering

C) prowess in battle

D) prophetic ability

8) WHAT IS THE NOVEL "1984" ABOUT?

A) Destruction of the human race by nuclear war

B) Dictatorship in which every citizen was watched in order to stamp out all individuality

C) Invasion and ultimate takeover of Earth by creatures from outer space

D) Man who went back in time and changed history

1— A (74 percent) 2 — D (43 percent) 3 — D (70 percent) 4 — B (82 percent) 5 — C (88 percent) 6 — D (72 percent) 7 — B (50 percent) 8 — B (52 percent)