38% of citizens fail citizenship test

I wonder, if citizenship English reading and writeing test is administered to natural born citizens, what the fail rate would be.
 
A lot of this is just demagoguery. If you give the test to GC holders who are not close to N400 stage, they will fail in similar numbers. They pass because they prepare. Do the same to natural borns ... give them time to prepare, give them motivation to prepare and they will do much much better.

Comparison with other countries ... didn't we already know the mental math skills of our population from the housing crisis that we need a formal test for them?
 
A lot of this is just demagoguery. If you give the test to GC holders who are not close to N400 stage, they will fail in similar numbers. They pass because they prepare. Do the same to natural borns ... give them time to prepare, give them motivation to prepare and they will do much much better.
I beg to differ. Citizenship test does not include anything that was not already taught in schools, nothing that an average American should not know. Americans' failure to pass the test only shows ignorance and the incompetence of local schools.
 
I went to high school in the US, and though I was familiar with most of the questions, there were some details I did forget, or possibly never learned. I consider myself excessively curious, and I often find myself on Wikipedia when I should be working, so if even I was unsure of a couple of the questions, in most cases (some people really ARE lazy or unable to retain information), I feel it's quite harsh to say that Americans are stupid because many of them would fail the test. There is a TONNE of information about my home country that I do not know, so maybe when one is an immigrant, one feels the need to learn an extra amount of information about the new country. Those people who remain in their home countries (I know many things about the Netherlands that many of my Dutch friends do not) often know less about the country. It's just human behaviour.
 
A lot of this is just demagoguery. If you give the test to GC holders who are not close to N400 stage, they will fail in similar numbers. They pass because they prepare. Do the same to natural borns ... give them time to prepare, give them motivation to prepare and they will do much much better.

Comparison with other countries ... didn't we already know the mental math skills of our population from the housing crisis that we need a formal test for them?

It depends. Bill of Rights may need prepation to answer (question should be what do we call first 10 amendment?)

but I doubt that more than 29% of GC holders do not know who the VP is and 73% do not know why fighting the cold war (actually teh question is what is the main concern of USA during the codl war)

On the other hand, some answers may be correct but was deemed wrong. The USCIS provided answer for cold war is COmmunism, but if you do not prepare based on that, you can answer with a gtreat variety: Soviet Union, Cuba, Vietnam, Nuclear war, space race etc


They’re the sort of scores that drive high-school history teachers to drink. When NEWSWEEK recently asked 1,000 U.S. citizens to take America’s official citizenship test, 29 percent couldn’t name the vice president. Seventy-three percent couldn’t correctly say why we fought the Cold War. Forty-four percent were unable to define the Bill of Rights. And 6 percent couldn’t even circle Independence Day on a calendar.
 
I beg to differ. Citizenship test does not include anything that was not already taught in schools, nothing that an average American should not know. Americans' failure to pass the test only shows ignorance and the incompetence of local schools.

I agree on the ignorance and incompetence. However ... with so many kids dropping out of high school, why are we surprised with the numbers? Also, I see no reason for an American to know a lot of this stuff ... yes you should know half of it, but you are still comparing people who did not prepare, and then had no business remembering half of the answers.
 
not knowing independence day is not condonable. given the media access (web, TV, etc), one should know VP of the country. While it may be good thing that many kids take bill of rights for granted; it helps to understand why they are amendments.
condemned to repeat history?
 
6% people could not tell independence day. 6% sometimes is also known as the margin of error. 6% people may not speak or understand the language properly. And I am sure more than 6% people fail either the english or civics test when they go for naturalization. It is not such a big number.

Look at the positive part ... 94% of the people did know. That's a big number.

Remember that US does not celebrate Independence day. They celebrate July 4th. It is not the same thing.
 

Did I say July 4th is not independence day?
When you listen to TV, when you read papers, and many a times when you look at school or work calendar, they talk about July 4th holiday. They rarely talk about Independence day. I would not be surprised if someone failed to co-relate.
Think of the other holidays ... there is memorial day, thanksgiving day, veterans day ... all come on a Monday or Friday so the date is not fixed and the mental relationship is with the purpose of the holiday.
Independence Day ... is universally known as July 4th, and not so universally as Independence day.
Why are we blaming the kids for not knowing when we setup a culture like that.
 
Why are we blaming the kids for not knowing when we setup a culture like that.
We? I noticed that immigrants do not suffer from the tendency to oversimplify everything as opposed to the native-born population. I personally always refer to this day as the Independence Day and so far not a single American failed to understand what I meant.

I remember once my political science professor asked the class whether the 4th of July exists in other countries - the overwhelming majority answered "no". Then he proceeded to say, "what, are you telling me that in other countries the 3rd of July exists and the 5th of July exists, but not 4th?" Of course, it was a tricky question, but it showed the flawed association between the date and the holiday among Americans.
 
Actually use of date to represent historical events is rare in USA. Right now I can only think up two examples : 4th of July and 911.

In other parts of world, such practice is common. Often a war is named by the date when it starts.
 
I think he meant some celebrated July 4th without knowing what to remmeber for?
Some amy think it is birthday of president or that kind of sort. I think on civic test
the question is :"When do we celebrate independen day?" . If you celebrate July 4th
but never know what it is for, then you can not undertsna dthat question.

I suspect that even if the question was asked as "In which month do we celebrate the 4th of July?", about 4-5% would not answer it correctly.
 
If americans actually understood what the founding fathers stood for - they would have grabbed their guns and run by now...
 
The founding fathers of Modern America .. JP Morgan, GoldMan Sachs, Morgan Stanley ... it is a different world. They like illegal immigration as it keeps wages low, and we are anyway slaves to their debt ... both at a personal (house and credit card) and national level (debt rating). Most of the work we do is to pay for their sins.
 
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