Our nation’s citizenship test for immigrants is undergoing a metamorphosis to make it more “meaningful,” according to federal officials.
“We want the test to be a reflection of the values that will help each person to be a more effective citizen,” Chris Bentley, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services told Herald reporter Krista Kapralos.
Let’s hope the would-be citizens don’t have to interpret that sentence on the new test. (One of the beauties of being an American is that you have the freedom to be as much an ineffective, or effective, citizen as you want.)
Federal officials want the test to have fewer “trivia” questions and more “meaningful” questions.
But what’s trivial? Kapralos’ Wednesday report included 15 sample questions from the current test. Other than No. 1 (What are the colors of our flag?) it would be hard to argue that the queries are “trivia questions.” In fact, it would be interesting to administer the test to a random sampling of citizens born and raised here.
Quick, how many senators are there in Congress? What is the Bill of Rights?
Who was the main writer of the Declaration of Independence? Who has the power to declare war?
These are things we should know, not trivia. But how many of us could pass the citizenship test?
It is very American of us to expect our new citizens to know more about civics than our average citizens do, but that’s our right. Just as it’s our government’s right to make the test harder. OK, more meaningful.
On the flip side, if many people would have a hard time passing the citizenship test, it’s a given they would flunk a global-citizen test. Not, of course, that we would ever have to take one. But in an increasingly international economy, a broader view is warranted.
A recent study, sadly, points to the opposite: Nearly two-thirds of Americans age 18 to 24 can’t find Iraq on a map. Six months after Hurricane Katrina, 33 percent could not find Louisiana on a U.S. map. (And that’s among Americans. Fifty percent couldn’t even find New York.) Eighty-eight percent could not find Afghanistan and 75 percent could not find Iran or Israel.
The National Geographic-Roper Public Affairs 2006 Geographic Literacy Study concluded: “Far too many (young people) lack even the most basic skills for navigating the international economy or understanding the relationships among people and places that provide critical context for world events.”
So indeed, let’s challenge all our citizens to know the United States and the world. It’s not a trivial matter.
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