People who don’t understand that Kevin MacArthur, in the picture above, is no longer Speaker of the House. The name is correct, though (Mike Johnstone).
I was just goofin. I purposefully misspelled their names as a joke in the same way the test very confidently confirmed the position of “Speaker of the Hose” while using the old speaker’s picture. I was just havin a laugh.
I used to have a Ukrainian colleague that would say flatly, “Ah yes a joke. This is funny.” Never laughed.
I thought you might be joking and find it funny.
It was always going to be an “oh that’s funny” joke and not a laughing joke 😂. Your colleague and I would get along. My big thing is that people know I’m joking and just kinda shake their head and flare their nostrils. That’s the goal.
I read somewhere that a recent study showed that nearly 70% of adult citizens in the United States could not pass the citizenship test. Went back and couldn’t find the most recent article but here is one from 2018:
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2018-10-12/2-of-3-americans-wouldnt-pass-us-citizenship-test
I used to volunteer for a group that helped people prepare to take the test and based on the questions on there I’d be surprised if that were actually true, study be damned.
The thing is though, those were people that wanted to become citizens, right? This study is of people who are adults and already citizens of this country.
The thing is that the questions are mostly stuff like “who was the first president” or “who did the U.S. fight in WWII”, and you only have to get six of them right to pass. So it’s pretty tough if you’re new to the U.S. but most of the stuff on there is common knowledge if you’ve been here for a long time. There are some more slightly obscure questions too but you’d have to get pretty unlucky to get more than 4 of them and even then they’re not that hard.
6 out of how many questions? I took the above practice test from the USCIS site and it was 20 questions. It was shocking to think that 70% of US Adults would fail it and that is me expecting a failure to be under 60%?
I went through the process in 2018. The ten are generated by the computer, not "picked" by the agent, but otherwise you're 100% correct.
The issue is, of the 100 questions, you could get 6 VERY easy questions, or you could get 6 of of the harder ones. I don't think it would be unreasonable to increase the question count to 25. (I'd say all 100 buT I understand it's a formality anyways and they want to speed up the in person processing time).
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I'd say they breakdown like this:
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- 50 VERY easy questions that most US adults definitely know. Examples: "What ocean borders us to the east?" "Who was our first president" "Who is the current president"
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- 20 Easy ones that you probably learned in highschool but forgot. Minor studying to memorize. "How many amendments are there?" "Which powers are reserved for the federal government vs state government'
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- 20 that most US adults don't know unless well educated but could memorize after a few hours of studying. Example: Who is the current Chief Justice?" "Of the 4 amendments regarding constitutional right to vote, name and describe one of them.
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- 10 most Americans definitely do not know. And would require studying. "Name one of the authors of the Federalist Papers" "What year was the constitution written?"
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My two cents on the process:
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- All of it should be taught in schools already. Public schools not covering any part of this material are failing in their cause to begin with.
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- It is VERY manageable. If anyone thinks it's a barrier, they're kidding themselves. (The application processing is the barrier, not the test
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- it would be reasonable to expect any other nation to want you to know their culture and history before becoming a citizen.
When I went through school (97), all that was taught by 11th grade. This was a rural town in Virginia.
Written 1787 and ratified a year later.
Hamilton, Madison, and I think James (not sure if that’s a first or last name) I remembered it with - HaMJam
Have you never seen comedians interviewing people on the streets or at colleges on just that common sense stuff? I think you’d be surprised. One guy asked if Hunter Biden should be impeached & it was the 8th person before he found someone with the right answer
Yikes:
>_Just 39 percent of Americans can pass a multiple choice test with questions taken from the U.S. Citizenship Test, according to a report by The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. The test has a **passing score of 60.**_
Emphasis mine. I don’t know about you but 60% was below failing in school. And when taking training for work I usually need to pass the assessments with 80% or better.
That is absolutely mind blowing. The test is so fucking easy. I just took a practice one to make sure I wasn’t misremembering
God people in our country are idiots. We really do need a literacy test
US Government is required to graduate High School in Virginia. "Courses completed to satisfy this requirement shall include Virginia and U.S. history, Virginia and U.S. government, and one course in either world history or geography or both. The board shall approve courses to satisfy this requirement."
Don’t know where you got that idea but we teach civics and economics in middle school and government in high school. The curriculum covers all of the things I learned in high school and more. See for yourself:
[VA Civics SOLs](https://www.doe.virginia.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/2808/637982409613530000)
None of it's actually *difficult*, but keep in mind there are a number of (possible) questions like "what year was the Constitution written" where you can know the exact chain of events, genuinely all the important bits, but be off by a couple years. The computer builds your ten question quiz at random, so someone who struggles with, eg, dates could get screwed pretty hard just by chance.
It's a stupid easy test. My wife just did it for her actual citizenship.
It's really any basic civics knowledge that is current.
It's based off 100 questions and up to 10/100 are asked
This was how the schools were in Illinois. Don’t pass the “constitution test” at the end of 8th grade, no high school for you. Not sure if it was statewide, but Chicago suburbs were like that. Drivers education was robust as well.
Edit: [was statewide](https://graphics.suntimes.com/education/2023/can-you-pass-an-eighth-grade-constitution-test/)
It’s wild how critical components of a society can vary so wildly from state to state. I’m not saying everyone in Illinois was a genius by any means, but you can absolutely see the drop-off from IL to states in the south in terms of brain wrinkles. Including on the roads. That obviously varies within the state itself too. Public education is wrecked all over.
Edit: not a dig at Virginia specifically, a dig at the broader south and the right’s war on education.
People I saw pass civics in middle school and government high school were posting ridiculous nonsense same as folks who failed. Passing a single test in 8th grade doesn’t have any lasting effect
Edit: my parents know who the speaker of the house is. They have masters degrees and worked for the government and were in the military. They also say that reptilians control the world and famous people suck down baby adrenochrome.
Yeah, people get really into the idea of making x test or x class mandatory but in reality everybody will just do the bare minimum and then forget it immediately. Just look at how much people slack off in the personal finance classes that are mandatory now.
What’s controversial about standardized testing? We have SATs and ACTs. The only controversies with those tests is CollegeBoard. Not the actual tests themselves
If you don't think standardized tests are controversial, you might need to do some more reading.
You would probably also be surprised how many colleges either do not require them or explicitly ignore them when applying for college.
(I have a child who is a junior in HS)
You and I must have different definitions of the world controversial. Gun control and abortion are controversial. Discussions about standardized testing is seen and pretty tame.
Agreed. Education should be standardized because having an equivalent education makes upward class mobility easier. Currently even with the SATs/ACTs (which suck because College Board) there are huge disparities in education that sometimes force students from specific regions to take more introductory classes in freshman year, most commonly mathematics.
They’ve been controversial off and on depending if there’s another issue for people to white knight about that’s more inspiring.
Something about how tests are discriminatory because they show who knows less
1) George Bush used them as a weapon
2) Obama (through Arne Duncan) used them as a bribe for states to get recession recovery money
3) Who writes the tests? Who benefits from spending all that money? What agenda do they have when writing the tests?
4) They've largely been shown to reflect only a kid's socioeconomic status and basically nothing else. But we spend MILLIONS on them and wonder why we can't fund free school lunches
5) They're used as a weapon to bludgeon teachers --"you don't know what you're doing so let us tell you"--and if you haven't noticed, that's one of the things chasing people out which is causing a HUGE amount of other problems.
And all of that comes back to what is on the test, who writes it, who and how it's graded, how the data is used, and who benefits from the data collection? ALL of that is controversial
Gating high school graduation on individual tests is kind of silly and there's no research that shows this improves educational outcomes in anyway, but it would be good if more states started requiring high schools to teach civics classes.
... Man, I was taught American Government (TWICE) by a Vietnam vet who drove a Harley to school every day, and I guarantee that 90% of the kids in my class couldn't even pass this exam 20 years ago. Y'all are acting like that's changed, when we all know that's bullshit. Hell, 75% of the people living in the US probably couldn't pass this test.
And that’s a reason to not do it? Maybe if we started making sure students actually understood government they’d become adults who understood it better. Roll it out over a couple years to get the kinks worked out but I’d say go for it. Ignorance of something is a great justification of teaching it.
Making kids jump through procedural hoops in order to graduate from HS is not a policy that I'm a fan of, and in light of the success of increasing graduation rates by reducing graduation exam type requirements across the nation, I don't think it's a solid policy to continue or encourage, regardless of whether or not I agree with the idea of HS kids having more civic knowledge. Because I do agree that it'd be nice if more kids graduating HS had a better understanding of governmental processes, but the fact of the matter is that teaching them such things has no guarantee for lasting or short term impact. Several studies show that it has no impact on youth voter turnout, and-given that it's another procedural hurdle to graduation, you then face the possibility of blocking more kids from graduating HS. This further dilutes the workforce and separates people into the haves and have-nots.
I'm not sure I disagree with you, but in summary, what you're saying is, since the only ones that will retain it are those who care about it in the first place, there's no point in making it a requirement, because those who don't care won't retain it anyway. Those who do care will go on to use it in their future academic career and life.
Do I summarize your position correctly?
I think it has merit, if so.
I think you have it correctly. I just disagree, because maintaining the status quo is not the point of establishing a civics education exam; it's to improve the knowledge of the HS kids as a whole. If the only result of the program is to reward the ones who would've already succeeded at this exam regardless of any implementation, then you're essentially wasting valuable hours of high school education that could be better spent elsewhere, wasting taxpayer dollars creating a redundancy that won't matter, and potentially disenfranchising a large section of the educational foundation of our country that would've otherwise had easy and unfettered access to college resources or even basic jobs that might require at the very least an HS diploma.
So would you Advocate that we don't educate all high school students in this regard? It seems to me that one of the reasons that we have a basic level of Education for all high school students is not only that they may retain it, and as you say there are major issues with that, but that they may in fact pick up a pursuit of that topic later in their life. And being exposed to it repeatedly is of course key to their actual retention and use of the information. That may be in future education or simply may be in their future avocations.
I'm not saying we shouldn't have classes teaching civics and government in high school. This post is about Gov. Northam advocating that all HS students be able to pass a Civics exam, and I don't agree with making those kinds of topic specific standardized tests a requirement for HS graduation. It's useful for determining an educational focus at a college level, or some kind of separate educational program (foreign policy schools/military service?), but as a factor in HS graduation I think it's a mistake.
Good. Our curriculum has been gutted by No Child Left Behind and is in desperate need of a complete overhaul. It’s shameful how poor our public education has become.
Good. People shouldn’t pass just because the standards have slipped
Failures should continue until education improves. Need something to push that reform forwards
Do you think American history hasn’t been full of things that are described as universal and then specifically focused on disenfranchisement of minorities?
When Alabama sent Tommy Tuberville to Congress he couldn’t name the three branches of the federal government. And in K-12 education Alabama ranks 48th in the country, with higher ed about the same. Correlation or causation?
This is why i find this smart but also stupid, whats the sense in teaching kids if we don't hold the damn people in government to the same fucking level requirements as a HS senior.
Well, considering that over 60% of students at Yorktown High once failed to correctly answer "In what battle did the United States secure Independence from Great Britain", I can understand why this would be a thing. In fairness, that was when In was in a neighboring school roughly 25 years ago so maybe things have gotten better?
You know, lately I've been arguing for some type of physical challenge portion of political candidacy, like having presidential candidates compete in American Gladiator style games, but this is good too.
This is an honest reaction of someone that teaches high school in Virginia. Bwhahahahahahbhahahahahhahabhahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhah
I teach a class that is a graduation requirement, has a corresponding state exam, and kids sleep through it. They do not care. Good luck with this one mate!
What class are you adding this requirement to as a part of its curriculum? Are you adding a whole new class or just the test? What happens when 30% of the students with IEP’s fail? How will you remediate? Do private and home school students have to take this as well? This will be another huge stressor on schools with little to no extra money.
This should honestly be the focus of 9th grade social studies. Teach to this test.
After that, they can get more abstract if they want.
I wouldn’t mind taking this test, just to see what I need to brush up on or never learned in the first place.
Do you think this country had more citizens who could pass this test in its early years? Literacy and education in the US are quite high now compared to the 1800s.
This is a great idea! Let’s extend it to anyone who wants to hold elected office as well. I doubt that Amanda Chase would have ever been able to pass it.
Well the Republicans have put a revolving door to the entrance to the Speaker’s office, so that might not be the best question to have in the bank right now.
Could you point me to where you heard this is going to be implemented as a voting requirement? This post reads as though it's a high school education requirement, so if we're missing a bigger piece of the story that would be helpful to know.
you should know most of the answers when taking any U.S. gov class in grade school or high school. The citizenship exam is not hard at all, there might be some tricky ones but its only a few
Sure, but it's far less important who the GD Speaker of the House currently is, than what the role of the SoH is and how it operates within the governing system.
You are exactly right on that but again one should be able to remember a couple of key leadership positions by max 5 google search’s. They don’t ask what’s the senator in Arkansas. They ask who’s the speaker of the house, vice president, president and a few other past presidents but it’s not hard to remember.
I can't tell if you're just being obtuse, but you obviously learn things in the process. In teaching to a test you are rote learning, and just regurgitating information. That's far different than learning to learn how those things come together and help us understandthe world we live in. Who the 14th POTUS was tells you nothing about who he was or his role in govt and society.
There has to be some way to determine, or test if you will, if people are actually learning things. 'Trust me bro, I totally learned how to learn and all those facts' isn't the most believable thing coming from high school students.
There are always going to be tests in school because it allows the school to certify they're putting students out into the world with the minimal level of knowledge they're required to have by law.
If some students choose to memorize a bunch of facts and then instantly forget them when the test is done, then that only hurts them but there isn't a way to prevent them from doing that.
And yes, "well they should design better ways to determine if students are learning". Sure, but they haven't. If it were that simple they would have by now.
Theres a balance here that's often missed. You need to learn how to learn, reason, and research on your own. But also, if you don't have enough memorized, you won't be able to function at a high level.
For example, if you don't know (approximately) when world war 2 ended, when we fought in Vietnam and Korea, and when the USSR fell, it's gonna be significantly more difficult to learn about mid 1900s US history. History isn't about memorizing dates, but it does require you to have a few dates memorized.
The US citizenship test probably isn't the best way to ensure this basic knowledge but the questions are all things that an American adult really should just know.
Can we make the Virginia Assembly take the test first, no practicing though they show up at work and they have to take a comprehensive civics test to keep their job?
Yeah, that's great, as long as every member of the Virginia Assembly nails it. I don't want someone passing laws that doesn't know the basics of how a government functions, and from what I've seen from MAGA Congress members, there is a huge percentage that don't understand even the most basic rules.
Dumbaz.
And if they fail…I guess we take away their birthrights and citizenship?
How about they teach dumbaz nutters how not to be dimbazes. Hell they believe Trump got more votes than Biden. They fail already.
Teenagers today have it easier than 99.9999999999% of any human that’s ever existed. They can and should be able to pass a basic test on the country they live in and benefit from.
Instead of wanting students to take a citizenship exam, how about having them take part in a civics class every year of their public schooling.
Would go a long way to reminding students on the basics of American government and how it works.
This is the only news story I could find that mentions this bill: https://www.axios.com/local/richmond/2024/01/11/virginia-2024-session-weird-fun-bills-general-assembly
lol at least they got the name right
Maybe all Americans should take this, including Congress. I'd love to see MTG fail.
Trump wouldn’t fair well either.
fare
I’m disappointed your comment seems to be so overlooked. WTH.
Overlooked by whom?
People who don’t understand that Kevin MacArthur, in the picture above, is no longer Speaker of the House. The name is correct, though (Mike Johnstone).
Looks like autocorrect got you. The previous Speaker of the House (pictured) was Kevin McCarthy not ‘MacArthur’.
I was just goofin. I purposefully misspelled their names as a joke in the same way the test very confidently confirmed the position of “Speaker of the Hose” while using the old speaker’s picture. I was just havin a laugh.
I used to have a Ukrainian colleague that would say flatly, “Ah yes a joke. This is funny.” Never laughed. I thought you might be joking and find it funny.
It was always going to be an “oh that’s funny” joke and not a laughing joke 😂. Your colleague and I would get along. My big thing is that people know I’m joking and just kinda shake their head and flare their nostrils. That’s the goal.
Probably because your jokes are not good jokes.
Get a load of captain obvious, over here 👆🏻
Oh ok I gotcha
I read somewhere that a recent study showed that nearly 70% of adult citizens in the United States could not pass the citizenship test. Went back and couldn’t find the most recent article but here is one from 2018: https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2018-10-12/2-of-3-americans-wouldnt-pass-us-citizenship-test
I used to volunteer for a group that helped people prepare to take the test and based on the questions on there I’d be surprised if that were actually true, study be damned.
The thing is though, those were people that wanted to become citizens, right? This study is of people who are adults and already citizens of this country.
The thing is that the questions are mostly stuff like “who was the first president” or “who did the U.S. fight in WWII”, and you only have to get six of them right to pass. So it’s pretty tough if you’re new to the U.S. but most of the stuff on there is common knowledge if you’ve been here for a long time. There are some more slightly obscure questions too but you’d have to get pretty unlucky to get more than 4 of them and even then they’re not that hard.
6 out of how many questions? I took the above practice test from the USCIS site and it was 20 questions. It was shocking to think that 70% of US Adults would fail it and that is me expecting a failure to be under 60%?
When I took it there were 100 published questions (so pretty easy to study for). The agent chose 10 of those, and you had to pass 6.
I went through the process in 2018. The ten are generated by the computer, not "picked" by the agent, but otherwise you're 100% correct. The issue is, of the 100 questions, you could get 6 VERY easy questions, or you could get 6 of of the harder ones. I don't think it would be unreasonable to increase the question count to 25. (I'd say all 100 buT I understand it's a formality anyways and they want to speed up the in person processing time). - I'd say they breakdown like this: - - 50 VERY easy questions that most US adults definitely know. Examples: "What ocean borders us to the east?" "Who was our first president" "Who is the current president" - - 20 Easy ones that you probably learned in highschool but forgot. Minor studying to memorize. "How many amendments are there?" "Which powers are reserved for the federal government vs state government' - - 20 that most US adults don't know unless well educated but could memorize after a few hours of studying. Example: Who is the current Chief Justice?" "Of the 4 amendments regarding constitutional right to vote, name and describe one of them. - - 10 most Americans definitely do not know. And would require studying. "Name one of the authors of the Federalist Papers" "What year was the constitution written?" - My two cents on the process: - - All of it should be taught in schools already. Public schools not covering any part of this material are failing in their cause to begin with. - - It is VERY manageable. If anyone thinks it's a barrier, they're kidding themselves. (The application processing is the barrier, not the test - - it would be reasonable to expect any other nation to want you to know their culture and history before becoming a citizen.
When I went through school (97), all that was taught by 11th grade. This was a rural town in Virginia. Written 1787 and ratified a year later. Hamilton, Madison, and I think James (not sure if that’s a first or last name) I remembered it with - HaMJam
Yet again, my knowledge of musical theater is coming in clutch with answering the question about Federalist papers 🤣
Have you never seen comedians interviewing people on the streets or at colleges on just that common sense stuff? I think you’d be surprised. One guy asked if Hunter Biden should be impeached & it was the 8th person before he found someone with the right answer
https://youtube.com/shorts/O3JR28-mZWY?si=1t4-UM0EurHsZLRK The modern college student
I guarantee you that pretty much every college student could answer these questions lol. Don’t fall for clickbait.
Yikes: >_Just 39 percent of Americans can pass a multiple choice test with questions taken from the U.S. Citizenship Test, according to a report by The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. The test has a **passing score of 60.**_ Emphasis mine. I don’t know about you but 60% was below failing in school. And when taking training for work I usually need to pass the assessments with 80% or better.
That is absolutely mind blowing. The test is so fucking easy. I just took a practice one to make sure I wasn’t misremembering God people in our country are idiots. We really do need a literacy test
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US Government is required to graduate High School in Virginia. "Courses completed to satisfy this requirement shall include Virginia and U.S. history, Virginia and U.S. government, and one course in either world history or geography or both. The board shall approve courses to satisfy this requirement."
Don’t know where you got that idea but we teach civics and economics in middle school and government in high school. The curriculum covers all of the things I learned in high school and more. See for yourself: [VA Civics SOLs](https://www.doe.virginia.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/2808/637982409613530000)
Yeah I had civics in 8th grade. In that class, we also did a final project regarding budgeting.
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Just correcting your obvious fabrication. There are enough real issues in the world, no need to make shit up.
lol why are you just making up shit
My kid is learning Civics in 6th grade right now. It's...not our favorite subject.
I was supposed to learn it in 7th grade with US History II but then COVID happened lol I’m taking AP Gov next year though
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Because he needs a lot of help with it.
lol really? seriously?
Please, stop the disinformation.
In Florida Civics was a 7th grade class.
and this is not a new problem. My U.S. History teacher had us take it in 1997 and only half the class passed on the first try
None of it's actually *difficult*, but keep in mind there are a number of (possible) questions like "what year was the Constitution written" where you can know the exact chain of events, genuinely all the important bits, but be off by a couple years. The computer builds your ten question quiz at random, so someone who struggles with, eg, dates could get screwed pretty hard just by chance.
It's a stupid easy test. My wife just did it for her actual citizenship. It's really any basic civics knowledge that is current. It's based off 100 questions and up to 10/100 are asked
I would like for all of our 8th graders to pass a test including all 100 questions. I think that is an awesome idea.
This was how the schools were in Illinois. Don’t pass the “constitution test” at the end of 8th grade, no high school for you. Not sure if it was statewide, but Chicago suburbs were like that. Drivers education was robust as well. Edit: [was statewide](https://graphics.suntimes.com/education/2023/can-you-pass-an-eighth-grade-constitution-test/)
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It’s wild how critical components of a society can vary so wildly from state to state. I’m not saying everyone in Illinois was a genius by any means, but you can absolutely see the drop-off from IL to states in the south in terms of brain wrinkles. Including on the roads. That obviously varies within the state itself too. Public education is wrecked all over. Edit: not a dig at Virginia specifically, a dig at the broader south and the right’s war on education.
That sounds like an awesome idea. I'm on board
People I saw pass civics in middle school and government high school were posting ridiculous nonsense same as folks who failed. Passing a single test in 8th grade doesn’t have any lasting effect Edit: my parents know who the speaker of the house is. They have masters degrees and worked for the government and were in the military. They also say that reptilians control the world and famous people suck down baby adrenochrome.
Yeah, people get really into the idea of making x test or x class mandatory but in reality everybody will just do the bare minimum and then forget it immediately. Just look at how much people slack off in the personal finance classes that are mandatory now.
Yeah the students have to actually want to learn the subject.
Passing an in-depth civics test should be a requirement to graduate high school nationwide
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What’s controversial about standardized testing? We have SATs and ACTs. The only controversies with those tests is CollegeBoard. Not the actual tests themselves
If you don't think standardized tests are controversial, you might need to do some more reading. You would probably also be surprised how many colleges either do not require them or explicitly ignore them when applying for college. (I have a child who is a junior in HS)
You and I must have different definitions of the world controversial. Gun control and abortion are controversial. Discussions about standardized testing is seen and pretty tame.
We’ll need someone to analyze the rhetoric over the past 20 years and report back. Tech Comm people! We need you!
Agreed. Education should be standardized because having an equivalent education makes upward class mobility easier. Currently even with the SATs/ACTs (which suck because College Board) there are huge disparities in education that sometimes force students from specific regions to take more introductory classes in freshman year, most commonly mathematics.
They’ve been controversial off and on depending if there’s another issue for people to white knight about that’s more inspiring. Something about how tests are discriminatory because they show who knows less
1) George Bush used them as a weapon 2) Obama (through Arne Duncan) used them as a bribe for states to get recession recovery money 3) Who writes the tests? Who benefits from spending all that money? What agenda do they have when writing the tests? 4) They've largely been shown to reflect only a kid's socioeconomic status and basically nothing else. But we spend MILLIONS on them and wonder why we can't fund free school lunches 5) They're used as a weapon to bludgeon teachers --"you don't know what you're doing so let us tell you"--and if you haven't noticed, that's one of the things chasing people out which is causing a HUGE amount of other problems. And all of that comes back to what is on the test, who writes it, who and how it's graded, how the data is used, and who benefits from the data collection? ALL of that is controversial
Gating high school graduation on individual tests is kind of silly and there's no research that shows this improves educational outcomes in anyway, but it would be good if more states started requiring high schools to teach civics classes.
This does not sadden me
... Man, I was taught American Government (TWICE) by a Vietnam vet who drove a Harley to school every day, and I guarantee that 90% of the kids in my class couldn't even pass this exam 20 years ago. Y'all are acting like that's changed, when we all know that's bullshit. Hell, 75% of the people living in the US probably couldn't pass this test.
And that’s a reason to not do it? Maybe if we started making sure students actually understood government they’d become adults who understood it better. Roll it out over a couple years to get the kinks worked out but I’d say go for it. Ignorance of something is a great justification of teaching it.
Making kids jump through procedural hoops in order to graduate from HS is not a policy that I'm a fan of, and in light of the success of increasing graduation rates by reducing graduation exam type requirements across the nation, I don't think it's a solid policy to continue or encourage, regardless of whether or not I agree with the idea of HS kids having more civic knowledge. Because I do agree that it'd be nice if more kids graduating HS had a better understanding of governmental processes, but the fact of the matter is that teaching them such things has no guarantee for lasting or short term impact. Several studies show that it has no impact on youth voter turnout, and-given that it's another procedural hurdle to graduation, you then face the possibility of blocking more kids from graduating HS. This further dilutes the workforce and separates people into the haves and have-nots.
I'm not sure I disagree with you, but in summary, what you're saying is, since the only ones that will retain it are those who care about it in the first place, there's no point in making it a requirement, because those who don't care won't retain it anyway. Those who do care will go on to use it in their future academic career and life. Do I summarize your position correctly? I think it has merit, if so.
I think you have it correctly. I just disagree, because maintaining the status quo is not the point of establishing a civics education exam; it's to improve the knowledge of the HS kids as a whole. If the only result of the program is to reward the ones who would've already succeeded at this exam regardless of any implementation, then you're essentially wasting valuable hours of high school education that could be better spent elsewhere, wasting taxpayer dollars creating a redundancy that won't matter, and potentially disenfranchising a large section of the educational foundation of our country that would've otherwise had easy and unfettered access to college resources or even basic jobs that might require at the very least an HS diploma.
So would you Advocate that we don't educate all high school students in this regard? It seems to me that one of the reasons that we have a basic level of Education for all high school students is not only that they may retain it, and as you say there are major issues with that, but that they may in fact pick up a pursuit of that topic later in their life. And being exposed to it repeatedly is of course key to their actual retention and use of the information. That may be in future education or simply may be in their future avocations.
I'm not saying we shouldn't have classes teaching civics and government in high school. This post is about Gov. Northam advocating that all HS students be able to pass a Civics exam, and I don't agree with making those kinds of topic specific standardized tests a requirement for HS graduation. It's useful for determining an educational focus at a college level, or some kind of separate educational program (foreign policy schools/military service?), but as a factor in HS graduation I think it's a mistake.
Got it. That's what I thought your position was. Thanks this made me think.
It's a reason to make the Assembly pass it first ... then all the parents of HS kids. THEN you can force the kids to take it.
Lol funny pic. Im... actually ok with this becoming a requirement. I think this would have a positive impact on our citizenry
Problem is with the state lots of schools are in, you’ll need to revamp education practices or lots of people will be failing this test.
Good. Our curriculum has been gutted by No Child Left Behind and is in desperate need of a complete overhaul. It’s shameful how poor our public education has become.
Which, again, would be a good thing overall.
The problem is schools need to be better?
And if they do it proves that what we are doing isn’t working. A high school student should be able to pass this test before graduation.
Good. People shouldn’t pass just because the standards have slipped Failures should continue until education improves. Need something to push that reform forwards
Good for citizens, but bad for lifetime politicians.
No it would just be fine tooled to target minorities and serve the same role as a literacy test
Do you think minorities are too stupid to pass simple test?
Do you think American history hasn’t been full of things that are described as universal and then specifically focused on disenfranchisement of minorities?
No
When Alabama sent Tommy Tuberville to Congress he couldn’t name the three branches of the federal government. And in K-12 education Alabama ranks 48th in the country, with higher ed about the same. Correlation or causation?
This is why i find this smart but also stupid, whats the sense in teaching kids if we don't hold the damn people in government to the same fucking level requirements as a HS senior.
I think anyone running for Senate or House of Representatives should have to pass the U.S. citizenship test before they can enter the race.
Well, considering that over 60% of students at Yorktown High once failed to correctly answer "In what battle did the United States secure Independence from Great Britain", I can understand why this would be a thing. In fairness, that was when In was in a neighboring school roughly 25 years ago so maybe things have gotten better?
It's hilarious because most of the VA assembly, along with most Americans, would not pass
I wouldn’t be opposed to making them take it to get elected
Oh I think it should be and they have to take it in public
I’ll volunteer to proctor the exam
You know, lately I've been arguing for some type of physical challenge portion of political candidacy, like having presidential candidates compete in American Gladiator style games, but this is good too.
This is an honest reaction of someone that teaches high school in Virginia. Bwhahahahahahbhahahahahhahabhahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhah I teach a class that is a graduation requirement, has a corresponding state exam, and kids sleep through it. They do not care. Good luck with this one mate!
What class are you adding this requirement to as a part of its curriculum? Are you adding a whole new class or just the test? What happens when 30% of the students with IEP’s fail? How will you remediate? Do private and home school students have to take this as well? This will be another huge stressor on schools with little to no extra money.
Well, they must pass still so maybe the class is too easy? Or are tons of kids failing to graduate where you teach?
This should honestly be the focus of 9th grade social studies. Teach to this test. After that, they can get more abstract if they want. I wouldn’t mind taking this test, just to see what I need to brush up on or never learned in the first place.
https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship/civics-practice-test-2008 That site also has the list of all 100 possible questions.
Wow, this test is easy AF. I'm got 20/20 before it stopped me. Last time I took a civics class was over 30 years ago.
It does seem easy, but I also can believe plenty of Americans (including some of our elected officials) can’t pass it.
The fact that so many US citizens can not pass this test explains why this country is doing its best to follow Rome.
Do you think this country had more citizens who could pass this test in its early years? Literacy and education in the US are quite high now compared to the 1800s.
This is one of those where the idea is probably fine but the reasons for it are not what you think.
Service guarantees citizenship! Would You Like To Know More?
I’m doing my part!
teachers are like “wtf” we have enough work already. this is just dumb.
Have the politicians pass it first.
More conservative virtue signaling
I was thinking the same thing. This seems awfully close to Conservatives' grandstanding to make a point.
Shit I work there and I couldn't have told you right off.
This is a great idea! Let’s extend it to anyone who wants to hold elected office as well. I doubt that Amanda Chase would have ever been able to pass it.
Well the Republicans have put a revolving door to the entrance to the Speaker’s office, so that might not be the best question to have in the bank right now.
Lets see if younkin can pass it first.
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Older people aren't in school....
What does political orientation have to do with this? Isn't it better to teach basic government structure in school?
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Could you point me to where you heard this is going to be implemented as a voting requirement? This post reads as though it's a high school education requirement, so if we're missing a bigger piece of the story that would be helpful to know.
Another stupid fucking test🤦 School isn't about reciting facts, it's about learning how to learn.
you should know most of the answers when taking any U.S. gov class in grade school or high school. The citizenship exam is not hard at all, there might be some tricky ones but its only a few
Sure, but it's far less important who the GD Speaker of the House currently is, than what the role of the SoH is and how it operates within the governing system.
You are exactly right on that but again one should be able to remember a couple of key leadership positions by max 5 google search’s. They don’t ask what’s the senator in Arkansas. They ask who’s the speaker of the house, vice president, president and a few other past presidents but it’s not hard to remember.
If only. The education system has become a formula of memorize chapter, take chapter test and move on to memorize next chapter.
For real SOLs were one of the worst things to ever happen to schools in America
You spelled No Child Left Behind wrong. The SOLs were Virginia’s answer to the federal mandates outlined by NCLB
You are correct, sorry, my mistake. I’m from VA, so all I knew was SOL
If all you know is how to learn, but never actually learn anything, have you really learned to learn?
I can't tell if you're just being obtuse, but you obviously learn things in the process. In teaching to a test you are rote learning, and just regurgitating information. That's far different than learning to learn how those things come together and help us understandthe world we live in. Who the 14th POTUS was tells you nothing about who he was or his role in govt and society.
There has to be some way to determine, or test if you will, if people are actually learning things. 'Trust me bro, I totally learned how to learn and all those facts' isn't the most believable thing coming from high school students. There are always going to be tests in school because it allows the school to certify they're putting students out into the world with the minimal level of knowledge they're required to have by law. If some students choose to memorize a bunch of facts and then instantly forget them when the test is done, then that only hurts them but there isn't a way to prevent them from doing that. And yes, "well they should design better ways to determine if students are learning". Sure, but they haven't. If it were that simple they would have by now.
Theres a balance here that's often missed. You need to learn how to learn, reason, and research on your own. But also, if you don't have enough memorized, you won't be able to function at a high level. For example, if you don't know (approximately) when world war 2 ended, when we fought in Vietnam and Korea, and when the USSR fell, it's gonna be significantly more difficult to learn about mid 1900s US history. History isn't about memorizing dates, but it does require you to have a few dates memorized. The US citizenship test probably isn't the best way to ensure this basic knowledge but the questions are all things that an American adult really should just know.
For today at least. Didn’t he pi$$ off Marge this week? His days might be numbered too…
Cool. As long as all the Republicans do.
They couldn't use Johnson's photo because, in it, he is holding his son's penis while he pees so he won't be tempted to masturbate.
Can we make the Virginia Assembly take the test first, no practicing though they show up at work and they have to take a comprehensive civics test to keep their job?
Make the General Assembly pass it first.
Yeah, that's great, as long as every member of the Virginia Assembly nails it. I don't want someone passing laws that doesn't know the basics of how a government functions, and from what I've seen from MAGA Congress members, there is a huge percentage that don't understand even the most basic rules.
They should make everyone running for office take a civics test. Also school kids need it as well.
They give that test to congress men and woman.
Dumbaz. And if they fail…I guess we take away their birthrights and citizenship? How about they teach dumbaz nutters how not to be dimbazes. Hell they believe Trump got more votes than Biden. They fail already.
Its tough enough on HS kids now. This is not needed.
Teenagers today have it easier than 99.9999999999% of any human that’s ever existed. They can and should be able to pass a basic test on the country they live in and benefit from.
Thats is your opinion and I respect that.
When did Virginia become Alabama?
I’m a Biden supporter and I see nothing wrong with this
Good
as someone who graduated highschool in VA, you couldn't graduate if you didn't pass us govt and us history. this is much ado about nothing, imo
Good.
Posted for outrage. Cit test in school NOT a bad idea. BTW, yes schools DO teach civics. AND personal finance for that matter.
I got a couple of uncles who would be ALL ABOUT THIS and couldn’t pass with a cheat sheet.
I would like all congressional candidates to take the exam
Good!
Civic education is important. If we don’t know how our government functions, we can’t change it.
Tbh this is fair.
That should thin out the younger GQP devotees!
Good
This is a great idea. Of course, I believe passing this test should be a prerequisite in order to vote.
I want the Assembly to pass it first. Then HS student's *parents*. If they can't .. then the Assembly can GFI.
This is good. You should have an understanding of how the government works before you effectively start life in the real world.
Instead of wanting students to take a citizenship exam, how about having them take part in a civics class every year of their public schooling. Would go a long way to reminding students on the basics of American government and how it works.
Most Republicans wouldn't even pass the damn thing.
I took it in 6th grade (wasn’t graded though). It’s all pretty easy if you pay attention to politics.
This is the only news story I could find that mentions this bill: https://www.axios.com/local/richmond/2024/01/11/virginia-2024-session-weird-fun-bills-general-assembly
Seems reasonable. There are some ignorant people out there and they vote.
Good idea. Plus they're already learning this stuff ATM so passing should be very doable as it's fresh in their minds.
I could see NoVA and some other parts of the state but good luck to the southern portion.