sir_eccles

An Arizona politician is suggesting high school kids take the uscis citizenship test to graduate.

Lawmaker: Require Arizona students to pass citizenship test

Not sure what would happen if they fail.

Apparently it's a popular idea. I see Utah and Missouri also considering it.

Sally Redux

From what I've heard it's extremely easy.

Obviously the push comes from a particular perspective.

sir_eccles

Yes for most people it's easy. You answer a Max of 10 out of 100 and they stop as soon as you hit 6 right.

When getting the link above I did find this report from 2009. 2.8% pass rate for OK kids!!!

2.8% Of Oklahoma High School Students Pass Citizenship Test

Sally Redux

Pretty dry stuff.

It would be funny if all the Latino kids sailed through it. Back to the drawing board.

Anian

It usually turns out that immigrants pass citizenship tests better than those who have lived there all their lives.

sir_eccles

Question is, what does memorizing 100 answers actually achieve? Does it make people better citizens?

Sally Redux

True inclusivity requires more than that.

GeoffM

Yep. My non-British wife obviously knew far more about the UK when she did that test than I did as a Brit. I would read random questions from the test books, not have a clue what the answer would be, but she'd know.

scrubbedexpat091

This would indicate to me the schools are clearly not teaching the information to the students for them to pass the test. Unless taught, people are not going to just know the answers.

No clue what its like now, but 1980's to late 1990's, US history and government were not subjects my schools spent much time on, most of the emphasis was on math, science and English, with very limited instruction in anything else.

Maybe is schools spent more time on teaching these things, the kids would do better, but then whats more important learning math, science, and English or memorizing facts about the past?

Of the examples on that link, the only one i don't know off hand is how many justices there are on the supreme court, the rest I can answer without needing to study, but I also spent a lot of my own time reading about history for fun, so that probably helped.

Out of curiosity I took a sample Canadian Citizenship test, and scored 13% (I do better on the US sample tests) but I didn't study and unless a history major, I'd suspect many natural born Canadian's could not score high without studying in advance.

Pulaski

Embarrassingly so. When I first found it on-line I worked through the questions without doing any studying, so completely "cold". I got 94/100 correct. FWIW I studied little history at school, and non after my second year at high school (age 12-13) in the UK, when we covered, so far as I recall, British history post Romans to 1066. However my head is full of a lot of trivia.

Oregon4now

I remember my Civics and Economic classes in Jr. High & High School when I was growing up in Southern California I hated them at the time but they were mandatory classes back then 70's-80's and you had to pass them in order to advance on to Electives. We learned everything about the branches of Govt etc, and ended by learning exactly how to Register to Vote, how to locate local polling stations and give our voice come election times.

Economic classes taught us all about money and banking, the values of saving for a rainy day, How to write Checks and how to Balance a checkbook etc, We even took a Field trip to a local bank and opened up our own personal Savings account.

This is not a New idea by any means, nor is it directed negatively towards a specific minority group as has been stupidly suggested by the usual suspects. I am glad most of the middle aged adults on this thread smugly know all the answers and think it is easy peasy, but this aint about you special snowflakes now is it.

It is about how some States & Schools are realizing the damage done with all the liberal dumbing down we have done in the Schools and there truly is a need to get back to some of the basics that were at one time, simply the norm in US education.

For the Record, I was a Spanish speaking Kid when I arrived in the USA, and only spent 2 years in Elementary school school here before I attended Jr. High 7-9 then H.S 10-12 in the San Fernando Valley. I even managed to pass, Imagine that

Pulaski

I think American children should leave high school knowing enough to potentially answer all the questions in the question bank, but actually having to take the test, a selection of 10 questions out of 100, is a bit daft.

Owen778

Thread necromancy!

kimilseung

What do they do in Arizona for Civics and/or American History?

Pulaski

It's not dead, it's just restin'.