Citizenship test results show how government operates

Gov. Scott Walker may want to think twice about cutting school funds, given the results of a recent Newsweek study.


The magazine gave 1,000 Americans the test immigrants need to pass in order to become a U.S. citizen, and only 62 percent of those taking the test passed.

Even more surprising, large percentages of those taking the test didn’t know the answers to seemingly simple questions, such as the name of the current vice president and what the U.S. was fighting against during the Cold War.

According to Newsweek, 29 percent did not know Joe Biden is the current vice president, while a whopping 73 percent didn’t know the U.S. was fighting communism during the Cold War.

While the vice president’s role isn’t nearly as important as that of the president, it’s still significant enough that people should know who is in the position.

While not knowing that bit of information can be excusable, not knowing the single most important fact about the Cold War is inexcusable. Lasting nearly 50 years, the Cold War was significant to the everyday lives of a large percentage of today’s population.

I remember growing up to the fear of communism, even though the threat in the late 1970s and 1980s was greatly diminished compared to what it was in earlier decades. How many people don’t remember this – or how younger generations may not have learned about it – seems incomprehensible to me.

Other interesting results from the test: 23 percent didn’t know Martin Luther King Jr. fought for civil rights; 33 percent didn’t know the Declaration of Independence was adopted July 4, 1776; and only 37 percent knew there are nine justices on the Supreme Court.

Andrew Romano, a Newsweek senior writer, said he believes it’s not an issue of stupidity, but more of one about ignorance. People don’t know some of the specifics because their brains are too preoccupied just trying to understand the basics of our complicated government system, he said, noting they do have a pretty good grasp on how our government works.

That’s kind of encouraging to hear, because I would have guessed few people could understand how it works, since it often seems more dysfunctional than functional. Most of the time, it appears to operate despite its many flaws.

And one of those flaws – how government handles education funding – may be the exact reason why so many people failed this test. It’s not a secret that education has taken funding hits in recent years, and as a result many schools have changed their curriculum to focus on material featured in standardized tests. It’s hard to blame them since those tests are used to measure schools’ performance.

Those tests usually don’t focus on specifics, like the name of our vice president, and instead concentrate on more general operational issues. Essentially then, the test results are perfectly reflective of what our government has created. But most of us know this already, since we are well versed in how government operates.