Here is a salutary bit of information. It seems that to get a college degree in
Florida, a student needs to exhibit the following:
… an understanding of the basic
principles of American democracy and how they are applied in our republican
form of government, an understanding of the United States Constitution,
knowledge of the founding documents and how they have shaped the nature and
functions of our institutions of self-governance, and an understanding of
landmark supreme Court cases and their impact on law and society.[1]
Hooray!! This is taken
from a State of Florida statute passed in 2017.
But how does one exhibit or demonstrate these abilities. This posting focuses on this requirement and
what it says about the state of civics education.
First concern:
shouldn’t high school students be able
to do these things? Of course, there is
a bit of vagueness in what is being asked.
For example, understanding the United
States Constitution can range from having to pass that portion of the bar
exam that’s dedicated to constitutional law or merely stating the Constitution is the basic law of the
land. But a high school graduate should
have a reasonable level of understanding and knowledge over the topics
mentioned in the excerpt above.
That graduate,
for example, should be able to provide a statement that distinguishes what a
“republican form of government” is from what a pure democracy form or an
authoritarian form is. He/she should be
able to describe how Supreme Court decisions are used as precedents in
subsequent cases. These levels of
knowledge seem reasonable for a high school graduate to have.
Second
concern: how is one going to measure the
level of proficiency sought? In this,
the law identifies those avenues by which the college graduate can exhibit the
desired knowledge. They are:
sign up and pass a college level
survey course on American government; or, sign up and pass a college American survey
history (since 1865) course; or sign up and pass an Advance Placement (AP)
American government course (which this writer believes is a high school course
– he taught back in the day); or sign up and pass an AP American history course
(again thought to be a high school course); or passing the College Level
Examination Program test; or – and here is the questionable way – pass by
correctly answering six questions on a test made up of ten randomly chosen
questions excerpted from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Naturalization Test.
All of these choices, except one, is demanding. The one – the one identified as questionable
– is not.
The Immigration test is – perhaps
reasonably since it is administered to all people striving to be citizens and
who represent people from little to no formal education to highly educated people
– has a different purpose than the one identified in the law. The law is meant to assure that educated
people know their government and the philosophy that undergirds it. Ideally, every citizen should have this
knowledge, but the law wants to insist that educated ones do.
Well, what’s wrong with the
Immigration test? Here is a sample of
the questions:
What group of people was taken to
America and sold as slaves?
When was the Declaration of
Independence adopted?
Name one branch of the government.
Name one war fought by the United
States in the 1900s.
Who is President of the United
States?
Name two national holidays.[2]
If you find the toughness overwhelming, relax. Although all of the 100 questions are equally
challenging, one can find the answers online along with the complete listing of
the 100 questions that makeup the test.
Oh, one might say, this is a
different kind of thing. Perhaps the
lawmakers got confused and thought the requirement should be for graduates of the
seventh grade? Well, this obvious
undermining of what the law was reasonably trying to secure drew a critical reaction. Consequently, in the future – yet to be
determined when – the test used on college graduates will be augmented with
other questions (hopefully reasonable ones).
But, in the interim there is this legal bypass to meeting the demands of
the law.
Why is there this bypass? Is it a lack of knowing what the Immigration
test contains? Or, is it a perceived need
to address the lack of civic knowledge generally shared by college
graduates? If that’s the case, then this
is but another indication of how deficient the nation’s civics education
program is.
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