Putting Americans to the Test

What do you need to know to be an American? That’s the tricky question raised by the Bush administration’s decision to revamp the test that immigrants must pass to gain their American citizenship.

Right now, the quiz focuses arbitrarily on a set of often-trivial facts about American history and government like “Who wrote the Star-Spangled Banner?” and “What is the 49th state of the union?” But frankly, who cares? If you ask me, it would speak better to contemporary civic competence if people could answer, “Who is Oprah?”

The difficult part is figuring out how to create a better test. One would like new citizens to understand the institutions and accept the values of our system of democracy, and one would like a test that shows that people know what those institutions and values are. Those seem to me to be infinitely more important than mere facts.

Not that native-born citizens necessarily know these things. But people who have grown up in this country breathe in civic values, whether they want to or not. I once gave a lecture in London in which I tried to illustrate the everyday quality of civic values. I said, “It’s just like at home at the dinner table when you tell your kids there will be no dessert unless they eat their vegetables, and one of them responds: ‘That’s not fair! I can have dessert if I want to. It’s a free country!’ ” In the U.S., this example gets nods of recognition, but in London, no one knew what I was talking about. No child in Britain has ever objected to a parent’s or teacher’s command by claiming “it’s a free country.” Only Americans have this peculiarly heightened sense of themselves as bearing a backpack full of “don’t tread on me” rights and living in a country that prizes liberty above all else.

Native citizens may not know who Francis Scott Key is, but they know that “this is a free country,” that “there oughta be a law” and that the police officer is supposed to read them their rights (this they’ve learned from television, if nowhere else). They know they should vote in elections -- and that they can be quite sure (if not 100% certain) they won’t be intimidated at the polling place.

But there are also some things natives don’t know or don’t remember. They seem to forget that democracy means conflict and debate, and polls suggest they are uncomfortable with institutions (like Congress) that make debate a centerpiece. A 1998 Gallup poll found that 60% of Americans believed that compromise meant “selling out one’s principles” and 86% agreed that “elected officials should stop talking and take action.” These are not views that suggest tolerance or appreciation of the mechanisms of democracy, especially not American political institutions that intentionally and carefully make it difficult for legislative action to be taken.

So what are the values that undergird our democracy? President Bush would like people to know that “equality before God” (along with tolerance, liberty and civic responsibility) is a value that makes us “one nation.” But although it is true that the religiosity of the United States is unusual among Western democracies, it is actually equality before the law that the founders saw as a defining feature of our national system of government -- not equality before God. There’s a reason the word “God” is not in the Constitution, and it is something the founders felt very strongly about. Could President Bush and the founding fathers agree on what a citizenship test should test?

Of course, our values and institutions have changed over our history -- and so have the requirements for competent citizenship. The founders not only confined voting rights to white male property owners, they expected even those voters to normally defer to the established “gentlemen” of their communities. New England town meetings built a framework for democratic participation but, in practice, did not encourage dissent or discussion. The task of the meeting was to have the community as a whole affirm what the town selectmen had already decided.

All of this changed in the 19th century as the emergence of mass political parties made civic life vastly more participatory -- and more wild and raucous. It changed again in the late 19th century when reformers challenged party loyalty as the premier virtue of the citizen, urging voters to be critical and informed rather than partisan and enthusiastic. And it has changed again in the last half-century, beginning with the civil rights movement, so that American citizens are now expected not only to know who their elected representatives are but to know what their rights are and how to stand up for them.

The citizenship test obviously cannot incorporate all of this complexity, but it can do a far better job than it does now. In fact, once it emerges, let’s all take it and, for that matter, let’s all debate it. The revision could become a focal point for national discussion about what it means to have inherited our remarkable constitutional system and what it takes to preserve it. Discussions could be periodically summarized online and in print, and comments could be solicited from those who teach classes for new immigrants and those who take those classes, from K-12 civics teachers to political theorists who study these matters in the broad sweep of world history.

Such a discussion could be a great national education for a place that is, after all, a free country.

Michael Schudson, who teaches communications and sociology at UC San Diego, is the author of “The Good Citizen: A History of American Public Life” (Free Press, 1998).

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Citizenship 101

Immigrants seeking to become American citizens must take a test on U.S. politics and history. Here are 12 typical questions.

1. What color are the stars on our flag?

2. What is the date of Independence Day?

3. Who was the first president of the United States?

4. What are the three branches of our government?

5. Can you name the two senators from your state?

6. Who becomes president of the U.S.A. if the president and the vice president should die?

7. Who is the chief justice of the Supreme Court?

8. Can you name the 13 original states?

9. Which countries were our enemies during World War II?

10. Who was Martin Luther King Jr.?

11. How many changes or amendments are there to the Constitution?

12. What is the most important right granted to U.S. citizens?

Answers:

1. white

2. July 4th

3. George Washington

4. legislative, executive and judiciary

5. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein

6. speaker of the House of Representatives

7. William Rehnquist

8. Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Rhode Island, Maryland

9. Germany, Italy, Japan

10. a civil rights leader

11. 27

12. the right to vote

Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security