How To Make It In America
Yes, you (a U.S. citizen by birth) can probably pass the U.S. Citizenship test.
It’s easy to find frenzied, overworked or overwhelmed Americans who, on a bad day, can’t quite identify the three branches of government, who don’t understand the finer points of federalism, or who can’t quite tell you that the federal government has the power to declare and wage wars, but not the power to oversee education nationally, even though the federal government has had a Department of Education since Andrew Johnson signed the documents to start it in the 19th century.
Whenever these beguiled citizens reveal their civic ignorance to some pollster, academic or late night talk show host with a camera on the street, we get a story like this from The Associated Press:
Let’s let the AP set the scene:
“BLUFFTON, South Carolina (AP) — On the first day of his American National Government class, Prof. Kevin Dopf asks how many of his students are United States citizens. Every hand shoots up.
“So, how did all you people become citizens?” he asks. “Did you pass a test?”
“No,” one young woman says tentatively. “We were born here.”
It’s a good thing. Based on his years of making his students at the University of South Carolina Beaufort take the test given to immigrants seeking U.S. citizenship, most would be rejected.
“Thirty, 35% of the students will pass it,” says Dopf, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and former West Point instructor. “The rest of them are clueless. I mean, they’re just clueless.”
Just clueless! The AP offers a practice test, so you can see if you’d wind up disappointing Dopf like more than a third of his students. But, don’t worry. If you’re reading about politics on the Internet, you’ll do fine. Here’s another, which has 20 questions instead of 10. Have fun. Like I said, you’ll do fine.
Here’s how the Citizenship tests works, by the way — there are 100 questions about U.S. history and our form of government. Each applicant gets 10 at random. To pass, you have to get 6 right.
There are decent reasons to miss a few, especially in cases where the government is described to act one way but in practice doesn’t. The test will expect you to know that only Congress can declare war, even though Congress typically abdicates that responsibility to the president. The test will expect you to know that only Congress can pass a budget and levy taxes even though, in practice, presidential administrations have huge sway over such matters and that once funds are allocated, the executive branch has tremendous leeway into when and how the money is spent. It’s easy to overthink this stuff. Aspirants have to learn to tell the test what it wants to hear.
My bet is that Dopf is a cynic and that most natural born Americans can score a D on this test, with minimal study, if their citizenship were on the line. That said, should we have more and better civics education? It’s hard to argue against that, but it’s hard to get enthusiastic about it if the focus is going to be a mix of trivia about the flag and questions about how the government’s founding documents say it should work even though it barely works that way at all.
The real civics education that’s missing is in the foundations of classical western thought, how it led up to the enlightenment and why it was meant to be self-improving since. What needs to be taught is how the American project, such as it is, has roots in ancient thought, art and society that still matters today.
I don’t mean that to be celebratory, though. At its best, the United States is a nation of muckrakers and truth tellers. The wit of Mark Twain, the cynicism of H.L. Mencken and the bubbling pavement of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Proud Highway,” have a lot to tell us about what the American Dream was meant to be and how it got twisted.
Civics education should embrace that tradition and go beyond the basics of participating in democracy by voting and serving on juries and get to the roots of deep civics engagements through artistic and cultural expressions, as well as political action. It’s easy to teach people that Congressional representatives serve two year terms. But what about teaching them what it takes to run for Congress, showing them why they should bother and how they can do it?
You hear all the time that this or that politician spent time as a “community organizer.” But who teaches what that is, why to do it, or how? Activism, for whatever cause, is a skill that we don’t teach in school. The uses, abuses and consequences of civil disobedience would be a worthy topic for study.
The point of civics education shouldn’t be to pass a random 10 question test, but to encourage the belief that engaging with society is worthwhile and that we do share a collective future that matters. Knowing why there are 13 stripes on the flag is fine, but it would be great if more people knew how to file a Freedom of Information Act request, which is a great way for citizens to hold their government accountable.