Americans should be required to pass the naturalization test to vote in elections
In most American high schools, civics classes are required, but still one in three Americans cannot pass the civics portion of the naturalization test, according to a study conducted by the Center for the Study of the American Dream.
It’s startling to find that one out of three of us cannot pass a simple 10-question test while 97 percent of immigrants taking the test pass, and most of the people who fail do so because of the English portion.
The test has questions about history, geography and government. In order to pass, at least six of the 10 questions must be answered correctly. If the requirement was raised to seven of the 10 questions, one half of Americans wouldn’t pass, according to the same study.
The question now becomes, “What’s causing natural born citizens to have less civic knowledge than their immigrant counterparts?”
The answer to that question is complicated and nuanced. I think most of it has to do with high school and middle school education. In high schools, students are expected to know how to find the area of a circle, they’re expected to know the basic plot of “Romeo and Juliet,” they’re expected to know the basic function of blood cells in the body, but they’re not expected to know the division of state and federal government, how the judicial system works or what the job of the president is.
This isn’t true for all high schools, but it must be true for many. Additionally, there’s no civics portion on the ACT. Many Americans growing up never have to know the functions of government, so they don’t care.
The question then becomes, “How do we fix this problem?”
One way we can fix this is by requiring people to complete a test similar to the naturalization test before they can vote.
People who want a say in their government usually vote. So if enough people want to vote and take the test, it will become culturally unacceptable not to know this basic information.
If that happens, even people who don’t vote will still have to know the information because culture won’t allow them to be ignorant of it. The effect of this simple requirement would be unquantifiable.
If Americans were required to know more information about government, history and geography, it would change political discourse for the better. Many politicians gain political capital by means of taking advantage of people’s ignorance. This would no longer be a viable political strategy if a required test was implemented.
This is also an issue of fairness. We expect people coming into this country to know something about how it was formed and how it works, but we don’t expect the same for ourselves.
A test similar to the civics portion of the naturalization test should be a required prerequisite to vote. We can’t afford not to.
