I would actually agree with Republicans on something: requiring a basic civics test, as Arizona has done, seems like a reasonable expectation. It helps that it really isn’t very difficult: here’s a set of sample questions, which most people have managed to get more than 90% right (60% is required to pass; I got 100%). I am suspicious of the Republican motives, though: they probably think they are putting up a barrier for immigrants, which seems to be the obsession among Arizona politicians.
But there are two things I like about it. The article points out an important datum:
A 2010 Harvard study by Jennifer Bachner found that students “who completed a year of course work in American government/civics are 3 to 6 percentage points more likely to vote in an election following high school than those without exposure to civics education.”
I agree that citizens ought to understand how their government works.
But also, I think they underestimate the intelligence and ambition of the people they think this test would hinder, while not realizing that the group that would probably most suffer difficulty with a basic, objective test on American government are the dedicated watchers of Fox News.
It’s OK, just as long as they don’t follow the path Florida is trying to establish: some Florida politicians want to make watching Dinesh D’Souza’s propaganda movie, America: Imagine the World Without Her required in high school. You’d have to watch it twice to graduate.
With a dismal eight percent approval on the film review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, ‘America’ has been criticized by some as offensive, right-wing propaganda.
“His argument boils down to this: History is written by the winners, and everyone else can go suck an egg,” Newsday movie critic Rafer Guzman wrote. “Native Americans decimated by European diseases? ‘It’s not genocide, because genocide implies an intention’ Blacks sold into slavery? Yeah, but lots of countries had slaves … As for Mexicans grousing that the United States took half their land in 1848, aren’t they the ones who keep trying to sneak out of that wretched country?”
That’s civics miseducation. Let’s not do that.
The Arizona test reminds me of the infamous “literacy tests” used until the 1960s to keep Blacks from voting.
As a soviet canukustani, i got only one wrong. Can i vote yet?
And it could well “backfire” massively. If all those students forced to take civics to graduate H.S., are also more likely to vote in the next election, unlike previous times when civics was bypassed, then we could well be looking at overwhelming landslides AGAINST the Repubs that instigated the Civics Requirement.
As an aside, speaking of movies, and nominations for awards, are we all aware the Kirk Cameron, that slimeball creationist voicepiece, had his movie (Kirk Cameron, Saving Christmas) nominated for the Razzies? The most prestigious of awards:
1) Worst Movie
2) Worst Actor
3) Worst Screen Combo: Kirk Cameron & His Ego
4) Worst Screenplay
let’s roote for Kirky to win all 4: hip whip, whoory!!!!
Same for me. The answers to many questions can actually be logically deduced from the questions – some questions read like “you’re still paying attention, aren’t you”.
:-D
Yeah, a “civics” test is good. Actually, a class in which you learn things is good, not a test. But fuck, the questions were awful at testing anything like that. One round is Name That Tune. Another is identifying the name of a Native American tribe from a list of four. Another is a historical question about one president, with some other bits of history about the civil war and revolutionary eras. Some are about geography. (Seriously, what the fuck does the Atlantic Ocean have to do with civics??)
It looks like none of it means you’re capable of being a well-informed citizen/voter. Sure, it’s a good idea — I thought at least some states already required a high school civics class — but the execution is fucking terrible if their sample is any indication.
A comprehensive version of this test would be awesome if a perfect score were a requirement for running for elected office. As I was taking the sample (100% – yay you can vote for me), I was tugged towards answering the questions as practiced rather than as they’re written in law. For example, does a Senator represent an entire state or just those folks in their own party. Hmmm. I probably would have gotten a 75% in that case.
A civics test would wipe out the Tea Party in a single election cycle.
re @2:
1:100
or
1:25 (the sample test @ the link provided in the OP)
I gotta display my civics savvy (since I got 100% on the 25 q sample test) The civics test score is just ONE requirement to be met to vote, do you fulfill the other requirements; like age >18, and citizenship? I knows you was just joshin, me be joshin back atcha…
Let me add that I’d like to see some kind of (obviously secular) ethics class, which could be tied in pretty easily with a real, no-nonsense civics/politics course. But its questions should definitely not look like this:
When Plato was writing The Republic, he lived closest to this sea:
A. Caribbean Sea
B. Aegean Sea
C. Red Sea
D. Caspian Sea
Yeah, the odd geography questions seemed out of place, as did having to know who James Madison was. Better to focus on practical, factual questions about the operation of government.
Also, some of the problems are inherent to the format of multiple choice questions. A lot were more forced choice questions than actual tests of knowledge.
or, “only represents those who voted for him”. It sure looks that way to me, that (R) Senators only represent the people that voted for them and everyone else can be unrepresented (“serves ’em right for not voting for MEEEE”, they think). Not to mention how easily they seem to get bought by high paying lobbyists.
When I was a senior in high school in Illinois, I was told that, by state law, I would have to pass what they called the “Constitution test” in order to get my diploma. Glancing at what PZ linked to, it seems functionally identical.
Of course, my classmates and I were given what we needed to pass: the test was given at the end of a semester-long course in civics.
This Canuck got 100%. That ‘test’ could be passed by anyone familiar with US TV & movies. How bout a test on how the US government & constitution are supposed to work?
I know many immigrants to the U.S. I’m a non immigrant worker myself. It’s common knowledge to me that immigrants know more US civics than US citizens (this is true even among “unskilled” workers) The thing is when you come to a country to work you often care a lot about the place. You want to understand it and try hard to make your place there. But when you are born into that privilege it is often taken for granted.
My concern is that a civics test implies a civics class, and those always have the potential to become a program of jingoistic, right-wing, indoctrination designed to create “patriots” and single out “unamerican, liberal, commies.”
@1 – Yeah, every time i think this might be a good idea, I remember the history and the potential for abuse and disenfranchisement. So while I’d like to do it, in practice it only discourages people who may be smart
I would opt for basic questions beyond civics that show some understanding of the world we live in, like:
— How long does it take for the earth to revolve around the sun
— T/F humans are made up of atoms
— Find North America on a map
— All man are mortal, Socrates is a man. Is Socrates mortal? [Some sort of reasoning/logic question. Just because you don’t know a fact doesn’t mean you aren’t smart. Finding the right question is a real problem though; that’s the best example I could think of this early in the a.m.]
Mere memorization of facts doesn’t cut it. I’d like to know that given some information, a person can think about it and reach basic(and I mean really basic) conclusions. I don’t care if you know who was president during WWII, but I do care if you can figure out that if 1+1 = 2, and 2+2=4, then 1+1+1+1=4. Again, bad example, but it is early. :)
If you can’t manage that, I really don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
In line with Al Dente, it reminded me of the “literacy tests” used for voter discrimination. But as long as (a) the test is not used to determine voter qualifications, and (b) the test is administered fairly (e.g., the same test in both anglo and latino-dominated schools), then it does seem like a good thing.
I was concerned when taking the test that it seems a perfect venue for introducing ideology and partisan bias. I found, for instance, two questions on Federalism framed in ways which made me suspect it would be easy to support “states rights” language in the future with just a little bit of tweaking.
I think a civics test after a civics class would be preferable.
I thought this was a sneaky question:
————————————————————————————————–
5. What is freedom of religion?
[]You can practice any religion, or not practice a religion.
[]No one can practice a religion.
[]You can’t choose the time you practice your religion.
[]You must choose a religion.
————————————————————————————————–
[emphasis I added] I think it was sneaky how atheism snuck in there. Most Conservs demand that the last option be mandatory for citizenship. Since “This is a Xian nation, founded by Gawd Hisself”, they keep telling us.
Will there be an option to take the test in Spanish? Somehow I doubt it.
Well…. The geography questions seemed weird but…. Can we really expect someone to be a functional citizen if they don’t even know *where* the country they live in is? Would it be misguided to ask which hemisphere the united states was on? I mean the Atlantic is one fucking huge ocean after all. It’s hardly an obscure trivia question.
I felt several questions were more rhetoric and cadence repetition of phrases then contextual understanding.
Are civics classes no longer a thing in high schools? We definitely still had them in canuckistan when I was growing up. That’s where we learned to say sorry all the time. And also that we should vote. And how to write a cheque.
None of the parliamentary stuff we were taught made any sense to me at the time though. First reading, second reading, third reading, but it’s all fuzzy, and right honourable members (what about left honourable members?) and etc.
100%, with a little help from PZ mentioning Madison. They screwed up the “name the two political parties” one, however. All good Faux viewers know it’s the “Democrat Party”, not “Democratic”.
This is what it’s all about, people. Citizenship. Everyone, required reading. Or, we get this; “Senator, have you even READ the Constitution and the Bill of Rights”? “Um, uh, TL;DR, but ahm ‘Murricun, anna paytreeut! Guns ‘n Gawd, praise Jaysus”! Oh, wait…
@6 blablabla- “perfect score were a requirement for running for elected office.”
Absolutely. Every freakin’ one of ’em. Even currently IN office. Even town councils, education boards, you name it. You fail, you’re OUT.
“A civics test would wipe out the Tea Party in a single election cycle.”
Along with curtailing most of the RWNJ / religious right rantings. Maybe. /*NOT holding breath*/
Oh, and 96%. Number 18, oops…
This is just a high school graduation requirement.
Other tests of this type, like basic math or English tests are extremely easy. They are intended as a minimal low bar for graduation. They are not intended to grade students or assess thinking skills etc. These tests are something the least capable high school graduate you have ever met are supposed to be able to do.
Given that there is an English language arts exam too, it seems doubtful that this test, or any of the others, are offered in a foreign language. The Citizenship test they are cribbing off of is available in other languages, but only as an accommodation to citizenship applicants over the age of 50.
Two questions wrong, 10 and 13. Wouldn’t it be more important to know the contents of the bill of rights rather than that they are the first 10 amendments?
blablabla @6
Isn’t the correct answer “the lobbyist(s) who donated the most money to their campaign fund”.
Got an 80% while being barely awake. Clearly, I am a great American citizen, despite my non-English native language and living across the pond.
I did kind of fall for the question about who senators represent, though. Everything I hear makes it sound like they only represent their own voters!
Yeah, no thanks. Instituting this test would provide a nice wedge for right-wingers to use against anyone they pleased. (To say nothing of being yet another potential way to collect data on citizens — I just saw a headline that Google is now bidding to supply “the cloud” for the federal government; just what we need, a merging of the two largest sinister and amoral collectors of private information… not that the NSA and Google weren’t already demonstrably in bed together anyway…)
On the other hand, I really like the idea of requiring such a test for politicians, as suggested at #6 by blablabla — only the test should be much more comprehensive and difficult. Think what it would mean if politicians were required to actually know history and policy. The mind boggles.
The Vicar:
You must be very confused. This about public education. People certainly could use the classroom inappropriately (feeding kids propaganda, for example, or just false/confused/bullshit information), but teaching anything comes with that potential. Yet we still manage to have public education somehow, and there can be some reasonable set of standards/practices for limiting the amount of harm done.
I also have no idea what data mining could possibly have to do with it. That’s an oddly specific and weird bit of paranoia. Isn’t there a better way for Google/NSA to find out who was president during the Great Depression and WWII? And why would anyone (other than their US history teacher) care what some random high school student’s answer was???
And you say you really like the idea of very “comprehensive and difficult” tests for holding public office…. If you’re being sincere, it’s hard to see how you’d have a problem with “literacy” tests for voters. You were complaining about right-wingers?
Trebuchet @22 wrote:
Okay, I can agree about the “Democrat” vs “Democratic” thing, but does that not imply that it should be the Republic party not Republican? Faux news is not consistent, in the least; so I assume they continue to be inconsistent,
I got all but two right, and I’m from the UK. I’m not terribly embarrassed at being off by two on the number of supremes, but I do feel slight shame at having confused Susan B Arnold for Betsy Ross.
Also, when it came to the question about who lived in America before the Europeans turned up, I wanted to answer just “Americans”.
I remember in 8th grade in California we had to pass a test on the Constitution before graduating from elementary school. (Some school districts still do this, I gather.) I presume that’s why I got a perfect score. I can still answer the question “Who are your U.S. senators?” (Tom Kuchel and George Murphy)
I didn’t see “the War Between the States” as an answer for the question about the North-South conflict, so I guess some people will get it wrong because they’ll refuse to answer “Civil War.”
Susan B. Anthony. No relation to Benedict Arnold. ;)
I think the questions are taken from Civics (History and Government) Questions for the Naturalization Test that immigrants must pass to be naturalized. In the naturalization test only a few of the questions are asked, but the format is of open questions rather than multiple choice.
@consciousness razor
Ah, yes, that would be it. You see, I grew up in Illinois, which (as already pointed out above) already has a civics test as a High School requirement. So I assumed that if this was being presented as a new thing worth commenting on that it was a requirement for voting, because just requiring it as a class is not newsworthy. So this is just PZ shocked by yesterday’s news? Good.
Assume for a moment that this test were going to be a voting requirement, as I did. If a state like Arizona is going to institute a test for voters, then it will definitely seek funding from private companies, and how could a good right-wing government possibly turn down a company’s request to include just one or two innocent little questions about, say, people’s soft drink preferences? Especially if those questions are optional? (Never mind that the optional nature of those questions will not be emphasized.) And, of course, since the name, address, and SSN of the person taking the test would necessarily be part of the data collected, that could easily be tied to the data already known. And, of course, knowing that person X, who has a history of searching for information about (say) model trains has no clue how the judicial system works would be an incredibly lucrative opportunity for unethical targeted advertising and shady business. I can think of 3 distinct ways that Google could abuse the certain knowledge of which people are ignorant of which functions of government, and I’m not even particularly up-to-date on the subject of privacy issues.
Why would you be against people having to know how to do their jobs? It’s okay for a voter to have unclear ideas how the government actually works; by definition, in a representative democracy they are voting for people who hold positions, not specific bills. They are trusting that those people will translate those positions into policy and law, and it’s okay if they don’t totally understand the process themselves. But when politicians holding office don’t know how the government works? It’s a waste of public time and money. And if they can’t follow complicated concepts to the point of being able to pass a detailed test on government, what possible good could come of putting them in power?
If that bill regarding D’Souza’s slimy propaganda film even close to passing….*shudder*. The very idea disgusts me.
From the relevant article, I thought this was entertaining:
The Vicar:
Not yesterday’s news. One, because this is about Arizona newly adopting this law, even if one had existed in Illinois before. Two, no, no such law existed in Illinois before, or anywhere else: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/01/16/377705559/arizona-first-in-nation-requiring-high-schoolers-to-pass-civics-test
Thanks for playing.
I’m not against that. I’m against formulating some such knowledge into a statute by making it a legal requirement.
If they changed what in fact a law is or how in fact it was enforced/interpreted/etc. (given those are things public officials occasionally do in the ordinary course of their work), they’d have rendered your test utterly useless and put themselves into a conflict of interest: on what basis should they change the law saying what the laws are which they must know? (Why can’t we just take care of this the old fashioned way, by holding them accountable for acting illegally, unethically, etc.?) All such laws/procedures/etc. are subject to scrutiny and revision at all times, so this problem will not go away. We do not have absolute, unchangeable authority, for very good reason: because human beings are not very good at coming up with real physical things that always work and always will work no matter what. Besides, the principle here is fundamentally anti-democratic. For one thing, because you’re letting some kind of stupid, simple little rule make the decision for us, which we ought to be making. And then comes the issue of how it could possibly be changed by anyone (short of a revolution, obviously). I guess it’s conceivable that we could at least get to vote initially on what the rules are, but we don’t get a say on what people generations from now will do with their legal systems or who they have the “privilege” to vote for or how that process works. As a matter of fact, we don’t have that for ourselves right now. If you want to vote for a total jackass, that’s actually your right and I should not be able to take that from you. (Which doesn’t mean it’s “okay” or that I wouldn’t be “against” it.) And when the subject is electoral reform generally, arbitrary tests about trivia are nowhere to be found in any serious proposal. They are just not a good idea, for a fuckload of reasons.
No, it isn’t okay. I wasn’t saying it’s okay for government employees to be incompetent or ignorant, and I’m not going to say it’s okay for anyone else either. I personally don’t vote for a face on a campaign sticker. I vote for what policies they say they endorse, and I do what I can to make sure they’re following the rules and trying to follow through on their promises. If I have no clue how the government works or what the rules are, I can’t do that. They can get away with not representing the interests of me or anyone else in our community, despite them being a “representative” according simply to my voting patterns.
I don’t understand what you mean by “don’t totally understand.” It’s not clear. I get that you’re backing away from “total understanding” but that’s vagueness taken to a fucking extreme.
It’s also pretty fucking ridiculous, on a psychological and sociological level. You think politicians don’t generally know what they’re doing whenever they violate the law? And making sure they know, by attempting to test this knowledge, will somehow solve that? LOL
Got 96%. Missed one because I didn’t know we now have a Secretary of Homeland Security.
For anyone interested I recommend an excellent podcast on political history.
https://myhistorycanbeatupyourpolitics.wordpress.com/
The earth doesn’t revolve around the sun.
It looks like a good idea on the surface but, as an Arizonan, I can promise you it’s nothing but posturing by Republicans to look like they care about education as they gut millions from K-12 and colleges. AZ already tests students on civics but with making it high stakes like this – which leads inevitably to drill after boring drill for test preparation – it runs the risk of doing the exact opposite of instilling a sense of civic responsibility. It might turn young people off even more to voting and otherwise participating in their democracy, which is just fine with the white Republicans running the state since a majority of young people here are now brown. We have enough of a problem with teachers having to “teach to the test” and unfunded mandates (the Legislature recently made public schools purchase American flags and copies of the Constitution for every classroom out of their own budgets).
@37, consciousness razor:
Had you stopped at this, we would simply have disagreed and that would have been an end to it. Alas, you continued.
Obviously, the law would be phrased along the lines of “a test on the operations of government as it will function during their term”, rather than encoding the test itself. Encoding the test itself into law would permit would-be candidates to simply memorize the answers, thus rendering the test pointless. The fact that you came up with this objection at all (and then manufactured a series of blather about it after that) suggests that either you are a fool or you are deliberately pretending not to understand how this would have to work.
At the present time, there is nothing preventing people from voting for people who are legally unable to hold office. (For example, you can go ahead and write in a vote for Arnold Schwartzenegger even though he isn’t eligible.) Merely changing what the requirements are wouldn’t force anyone not to write in a vote.
It’s a pity you couldn’t have come up with even one, rather than manufacturing a chunk of mindless stupidity and rambling about it at length. Because if anything you’re convincing me that something which raises the hackles of someone who argues so poorly must have something going for it.
Well, then, you deliberately-obtuse twit, you not only have never voted for a winner but cannot do so. “Free access to abortion” can’t run for office, and neither can “progressive income tax”, or “freedom of speech”. You necessarily vote for a person, not an idea. Really and truly, the way you pretended not to know what I was talking about here suggests that you are either arguing in bad faith, or an utter, utter fool.
@anteprepro:
Does it matter whether it’s a state law if it’s a uniform requirement of all the school districts? Because IIRC it is (or was) in Illinois. Trying to whip people into a frenzy about this as though it’s a big, new, scary thing is silly.
As a high school teacher with a history degree, I’m going to have to leave my usual lurking and weigh in on this one. Apologies in advance for a very long comment.
There are several issues involved in this question that non-K-12 teachers may not be aware of. I’ll try to lay them out in a manner that makes sense.
First, it’s already standard in most districts that students must pass both an American history course and a Civics course of some kind in order to graduate. My district does the second in a Social Science course that covers a combination of American-focused political science and economics that is very strong (at least if you follow the approved curriculum) on civics and government at all levels (local, state, and federal.) This is certainly what we all expect should be part of a high school education to make children into functioning citizens. But the very inclusion of these courses as a graduation requirement tends to make a test like Arizona’s redundant.
The other problem with test like this is one teachers have been fighting for quite a while, the problem of standardized testing itself. Our students are already vastly over-tested and those tests force curriculum into modes of teaching and “learning” that are the exact opposite of what we know through long years of educational research are actually good for students. Critical thinking, depth of knowledge, basically anything but rote learning and test-taking skills are forced to the wayside by the demands of high-stakes testing. Ever since the passage of the very misnamed “No Child Left Behind” law, the effects of increased high-stakes testing have been driving out the kind of education that many of us received in public schools in our own youth and that those privileged enough to go to private schools (like the children of virtually every current education “reform” advocate) still receive.
Then there’s the question of the test itself. Some of you, including PZ, have already noted the fairly poor job a test of this kind does of assessing real knowledge. That’s a very valid and relevant point, but it doesn’t even get to the real problems with standardized tests. The most basic is that they are designed and scored specifically to produce a bell curve, which means that they will always fail a percentage of students, with that percentage being determined by the “cut score” set for passing/failing grades. But the cut scores of all standardized tests are inherently arbitrary, there is no objective standard against which they can be set if the bell curve is to be maintained. This leads to the lunacy of tests like out Keystone tests here in Pennsylvania, where the cut score is set at the equivalent of an 83 on a 100 point scale. The state has tried to disguise this by claiming the cut score set (1500) is based on a 1200-1800 possible point range for the test, but my experience with actual student test scores has made it clear that the possible point range is 0-1800 (I have personally seen scores as low as 63, mostly from students who simply did not answer most of the questions.)
Regardless of cut score, however, the idea that any high-stakes test is inherently designed to have some students fall below a passing grade regardless of other factors renders these assessments useless for the purpose to which they have been put. Since standardized tests were originally conceived and designed as diagnostic tools for professional educators (like the achievement tests most of us took in high school), using these methods made sense. But as they are used now, they are counter to any real educational goal.
So, while this seems like a good idea, it looks a lot less good when put in the context of current K-12 education policy. One more standardized test, and one that can easily be made harder and harder (and with a higher and higher cut score) is likely to do what the current crop of tests are doing: ensure that those with less preparation and opportunity are increasingly cut out from the benefits of real education. For those of you who’d like to dig deeper into these issues, I’d recommend the fine work of education bloggers like Mercedes Schneider or the redoubtable Diane Ravitch.
Not if they believe Iraq is next door.
what is this I can’t even
You Scored: 96% (24 of 25) … as a German.
This includes several lucky guesses, and at least as many questions that leave only one reasonable choice (though I see that someone managed to get at least some of those wrong – while there was no pair of secretaries where I was certain that both exist, there were three where I was certain that at least one doesn’t).
I got #10 wrong, and don’t feel bad about that – that was the moment I said “aha, so I did get everything else right so far!” – it was the one unlucky guess.
(I was fairly certain about who senators represent, even though I remember the legal history to be rather complicated; it certainly doesn’t match the German version, where their equivalents represent the state governments. Also, the second person after the German president (vastly less important than the chancellor) would be what in the US might be called the speaker of the senate, i.e. the president of the Bundesrat, one of the state what you’d call governors – the job rotates among the states.)
Maybe it wasn’t a state law – it could easily have just been a district policy. *shrug*
To my mind, there’s a profound difference between “after we give you the necessary tools, perform this task, as we think it’s important that you be able to perform this task” and “perform this task, despite having gotten no preparation, understanding that we’re going to use your failure to punish you.”
#41 donnagratehouse: “(the Legislature recently made public schools purchase American flags and copies of the Constitution for every classroom out of their own budgets).”
When I attended K-12 in Arizona, more than a few but not that many years ago, it was the only state in the US that required pupils to purchase their own textbooks.
88%, and I’m Canadian. One was a minor mistake, one I would have known if I went to high school in the U.S.
It would be nice if everyone knew the basics of how the government they live under works. This should be mandatory for all children in every country. My guess would be that immigrants actually understand it better than most “Americans” do. After all, they need to understand their rights because they are probably going to have to exercise them in some very difficult situations and have them trampled over on a daily basis.
It seems most of the test is just memorization, with little understanding of anything. But the worst is, it is estimated that 96% of high school students will fail it. So, AZ will have essentially no one graduating. This happened with the AIMS test a few years back, and the requirement was quickly thrown out. So why bother?
Wow, that sounds like the 1950s.
re 46:
The history of Senator representation, was first: elected by the State Legislature to represent the State’s interests (not the residents of that State, necessarily). The Constitution was then Amended to make Senator elections statewide citizen elections. Transforming, their supposed function, to representing ALL the residents of that State. /pedantry
Sorry to be a pedant, just had to point at the Amendment that changed our election process of our representatives. I have to admit. that once (upon a time) I objected to that Amendment, blurring the distinction between Reps and Senators, but now I reconsider and can’t decide one way or t’other. Part of it is Senators being now the Roadblock to any legislation offered by the ‘Bama. They’ve blurred themselves into an “Anti” Role of Government.
I would love it if someone designed one full of tea-party bait questions, like:
Social security is managed by:
a) the evil government
b) the glorious free market
c) Uncle Floyd
Stuff like that.
True, but.. sadly, back then, it would have only been the black people who failed them, and they where designed to weed out blacks, not test for basic comprehension. Which isn’t to say that Arizona wouldn’t do something like.. testing for basic Fox News watching, or something, as a means to “test” whether you passed their strict rules for who got to vote…. But, bloody hell, maybe there does need to be some sort of minimum standards, if for no other reason than it would mean the twits that couldn’t pass it with access to google search and a complete answer sheet, being allowed to vote along side of someone that actually has a basic clue where their own state is located, or what the frak “Republic” actually means, never mind Democracy, or Free Speech.
One Governor Christie comes recently to mind…
most Emigrants understand it better then most Americans do as well.
hence, the emigration part.
you show some genuine ignorance here.
think about it for a second…
let’s work with an example.
Ted Cruz.
do you know his educational background?
go ahead, I’ll wait.
*waits*
yeah. He only PLAYS dumb on TV.
what in HELL makes you think passing a test would make them do their job better, when it NEVER HAS been about doing the job you would think a politician should be doing in the first place?
here’s another example:
Jonathan Wells.
not a politician, but an antiscience creationist.
I WATCHED him get a PhD from the Molecular and Cell biology department in Berkeley, while all of us in Zoology booed and hissed, and then watched him publish “Icons of Evolution”.
you think he didn’t know better? The fuck he didn’t.
It’s not ignorance that is the problem in politics, it’s flat out lies and the lying liars that tell them.
forcing politicians to take a test is meaningless.
You ain’t kidding…
stwriley @ 44,
While I don’t necessarily disagree with the rest of your post, you’re confusing norm-referenced and criterion-referenced tests here. Norm-referenced tests rank examinees in reference to the population that takes the test; in such a test, you’d expect a normal distribution (a bell curve), and results are reported in reference to the population (usually as percentiles). NCLB tests are criterion-referenced; that means that results are interpreted in terms of standards through a standard-setting study (which establishes the cut scores). Get a score above the cut score and you pass, below it and you fail. Unlike norm-referenced tests, it’s entirely possible for everyone (or no one) in the population to attain a score higher than the cut score.
I have no intention of defending the current testing regime in the US, but if you’re going to fight it, you need to get the basics right.
#55 Kagehi: “back then, it would have only been the black people who failed them, and they where designed to weed out blacks, not test for basic comprehension.”
Actually, it was worse than that. The tests were incomprehensible, with questions that often had no right answer. The poll officials would decide who to test, ie anybody not white, and the same poll workers evaluated the tests. In other words if they decided you weren’t voting, you weren’t voting.
I bombed that test…
I’m not even kidding. Like, I got way too many wrong, mostly in the first half. I FELT like I knew the answers after it told me I was wrong though, like “I knew that!”, ya know? … I don’t know how to fix that.
As to the idea, it’s aimed at immigrants. I’m not sure it’s wise to require immigrants to know more than native residents. Maybe it would be more fair if EVERYONE had to pass such a civics test?
…while not realizing that the group that would probably most suffer difficulty with a basic, objective test on American government are the dedicated watchers of Fox News.
Not if it’s the Fox News crowd who get to write the test questions.
Three wrong, and I don’t even want to be an American.
Something tells me the teabaggers would do worse than the average.
While ignorance isn’t the only problem in politics (and I fully agree that Wells is a liar – haven’t read up on Cruz), it quite obviously is a big problem there. I’ve seen lots of politicians act against even their own interests because they evidently didn’t know any better.