Almighty Dad | A stay at home dad blog

I took a full, practice citizenship test in 2002 when Mely was studying for hers.  I thought, “I better be able to pass this if I expect Mely to do it.”  I scored exactly 90% (I forgot what Mely scored on the actual test, but it was a solid pass).  Certainly a 90% is not perfect, and I could improve, but my score is apparently much better than the rest of the country.  42% of Oklahoma high school graduates cannot pass the US citizenship basic knowledge test (read the full article here).  To be honest, I’m not surprised.  I’m not saying people from Oklahoma are stupid.  Um, yeah – I guess I am saying that.  But, I shouldn’t pick on Oklahoma because the rest of the country got similar scores (although the article doesn’t mention how similar).  Let’s see how you do.  Here are the questions that were randomly selected out of 100 from the actual citizenship test:    

- The idea of self-government is in the first three words of the Constitution.  What are these words?   

- What are two rights in the Declaration of Independence?   

- What is the economic system in the United States?   

- Who makes federal laws?   

- Who is one of your state’s U.S. Senators now?   

- Name one war fought by the United States in the 1800s.   

- We elect a U.S. Representative for how many years?   

- Who is the commander in Chief of the military?   

- Why does the flag have 13 stripes?   

- Before he was President, Eisenhower was a general. What war was he in?   

If you answered 6 or more correctly then you pass (technically a D isn’t an F so it’s passing).  Interestingly, Oklahomans did well recalling the first three words of the Constitution, but they fell on their faces when asked about the Declaration of Independence.  That seems strange as I would think people who knew something about the Constitution would also know about the Declaration of Independence, but here’s the really informative bit:   

“Although most segments of society performed similarly to the overall results, further analysis reveals that some groups performed better than others.  77 percent of private school graduates passed, compared to only 57 percent of public school graduates.  Of Native Americans surveyed 62 percent made a D or higher, compared to only 57 percent of Whites and 58 percent of Blacks.”   

Why are we Collectively so Dumb?   

You knew I was going to say something about public schools, right?  Actually, I don’t need to say much.  Look at the test results.  59% of citizens who attended high school in Oklahoma got a D or worse (D is failing as far as I’m concerned).  They say the rest of the country didn’t do much better.  Thus, I think we can safely say that public schools at least fall short in educating our children about basic citizenship.  Is it entirely the schools that are to blame though?  Or is it a case of being able to lead a horse to water …?  Perhaps an even bigger problem than public schooling is the fact that citizens don’t seem to be taking their citizenship seriously.  Are we really so addicted to what passes for reporting on 24 hour television news stations that we have ceased to truly educate ourselves?  We want dumbed down news and stories about Lindsey Lohan and Lady Ga Ga.  Where are the correspondents of old who sincerely cared about getting a real story, the Edward R Murrows?  And where are the consumers who crave knowledge more than sound bytes?

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