Arizona - 1st State To Require HS Graduates Pass US Citizenship Civics Section...

[Selene]

PHOENIX (AP) -- Arizona became the first state in the nation on Thursday to enact a law requiring high school students to pass the U.S. citizenship test on civics before graduation, giving a boost to a growing nationwide effort to boost civics education.

Both the Arizona House and Senate quickly passed the legislation on just the fourth day of the legislative session, and newly elected Republican Gov. Doug Ducey signed it into law Thursday evening.

The swift action in Arizona comes as states around the country take up similar measures. Arizona's law requires high school students to correctly answer 60 of 100 questions on the civics portion of the test new citizens must pass.

This is a good first step...I am speaking with some folks in Hillside that think it is a great idea. So, I am going to meet with the Mayor, she is a friend and bounce it off her.

Ducey had urged the Legislature to make the civics test the first bill to hit his desk as governor. He said studies show that students don't know enough about basic government to grow into effective citizens.

Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, an Arizona native, has supported the initiative. She's made civics education a prime focus in recent years.

The organization that is behind this effort is:

The Foss Institute, whose motto is "Patriotism Matters," has created a civics institute to promote the test to state legislatures as a way to increase the understanding of basic government by students, with the hope they will be better prepared to be engaged citizens.

Institute president Frank Riggs, a former California congressman who ran for Arizona governor as a Republican last year, said the testing initiative seeks "to ensure the delivery the very basics civics education that every high school graduate should have."

Joe Foss is a former South Dakota governor and won the Medal of Honor during World War II. He died in 2003.

The North Dakota House of Representatives overwhelming approved the same measure Thursday.

Read more: http://www.azfamily.com/news/Arizona-passes-law-requiring-students-to-pass-civics-test-288753801.html#ixzz3OxknG6ts

http://www.azfamily.com/home/Arizona-passes-law-requiring-students-to-pass-civics-test-288753801.html

A...

[Guyau]

Adam,

I attended public high school in Oklahoma in the early ’60’s. (I am one bit of evidence of the worth of public schools.) There was no State requirement of passing this particular test for civic knowledge, but there was a requirement for passing a course in civics. In our case, that included history of Oklahoma. In college too, there was a requirement (by law, I think) for an introductory course in political science, which was a superb course on our federal three branches and how they operate.

I don’t really object to the further requirement on public high school students to pass the citizenship test, but I pick up not only a good vibe, but also an ugly vibe from that sort of social movement. My grandparents on my stepmother’s side were born in America. So they were US citizens. I doubt they could pass that test, given their level of formal education. These were people whose lives were on farms in the days of mules and horses for plow and buggy. Their parents were German immigrants. My stepmother’s folks spoke German and English, but some family members of the previous generation spoke only German. Grandpa’s Bible was in German, and so were the church services during the childhood of my stepmother. She was born in 1920. She could remember that when her folks were talking with relatives in German on the telephone, which was a party line, English speakers would come in and heckle them and drive them off. At some point, one of her uncles (or maybe it was a great uncle) was tarred and feathered because he was always speaking German. Her mother told me that in the years of WWI and after, they always kept pictures of he American flag in the house, and in a top drawer of the china cabinet, they kept copies of things like the Declaration. You see, there were these thugs in league with local law enforcement who would come into your house and search for signs of disloyalty to America. So I pick up that ugly vibe in this recent movement too. It is a collective movement, of course, with multiple subsidiary currents. Sons of those grandparents who likely could not pass such a test served in WWII and Korea.

[galtgulch]

I attended a public elementary school and a public technical high school in Brooklyn NY. I have always appreciated the opportunity that provided for me.

It is clear to me that the founders of America realized that the central government they were creating had to have limited powers and they had to know that there would be forces at work to have that federal government extend its powers beyond the powers granted. Try as they might with the enumerated powers clause and the inclusion of the oath of office for lawmakers it quickly became evident that they had opened Pandora's Box.

The key was the necessity for the population to become educated without indoctrination. These civics courses teach what passes for wisdom and the questions on the civics test do not address more crucial issues at all.

As is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, when asked what form of government was given to us, he said: "A Republic, if you can keep it!"

Our country is virtually bankrupt because of spending programs not authorized in the Constitution. Millions benefit from those give aways so it is difficult to eliminate them without causing pain if not an uprising.

Nowhere in the Constitution is there authorization for a central bank, but we have one in the Federal Reserve Bank which has caused the loss of purchasing power by over 98% since 1913. Only gold and silver coins are Constitutional money or redeemable paper backed by gold and silver. Our "dollar " is about to collapse. The dollar was defined in the First Coinage Act of 1792 as a coin containing 371 grains and 4 sixteenth of a grain of silver. Now thanks to several US Supreme Court monetary decisions there is no gold or silver behind the fiat paper Federal Reserve Notes.

Be prepared.

gg

[Brant Gaede]

My great-grandfather supposedly offered my grandfather $10,000 if he would teach his son, my father, German. My grandfather refused because of anti-German prejudices in WWI It's hard to believe that figure for it would be equivalent to at least $200,000 today, but that's the story. These people were of German stock who came to the mid-west (Kansas) from Russia when the Czar revoked their draft-exempt status. They were Mennonites who became Seventh-Day Adventists. My grandfather was born in Russia (Ukraine) in 1871. In the early 1800s his near-ancestors literally walked to Russia from Germany to escape military service. Those who stayed in Ukraine were murdered by starvation by Stalin.

--Brant

[Guyau]

Brant, do you have any sense of the sentiments for support of this new requirement for high school students in your state. Do you hear any supporting voices that seem anti-Mexican or anti-Muslim in their concern? Beyond the theme of engaging young citizens in the civic processes, do you hear any concern over great ignorance of the students (or some race of students) about such content as is in the citizenship test?

[Brant Gaede]

Brant, do you have any sense of the sentiments for support of this new requirement for high school students in your state. Do you hear any supporting voices that seem anti-Mexican or anti-Muslim in their concern? Beyond the theme of engaging young citizens in the civic processes, do you hear any concern over great ignorance of the students (or some race of students) about such content as is in the citizenship test?

Not really. It's all about the worth of more tests as such for learning. It's just the new governor's initiative. The conservative political impulse in this state centers on Phoenix. Tucson is the more liberal. The Phoenix metro area is at least three times more populace than Tucson's. Muslims have become more apparent in one area of the city I'm aware of. (I live in Tucson.) Still, not common. Lots of Mexican stock. My next door neighbor's ancestor fled the US after the Civil War for Mexico and some of his descendants ended up back in the states. I grew up in a Mexican-American neighborhood--until I was seven. Just before I left for a year in Ohio the Mexican boys stopped talking to me and my brother as if they had gone insular. In high school they were completely to themselves. That didn't last--whatever the cause (I suspect school)--come adulthood as society changed over the years. My step-father was an Anglo but a prof. of Spanish lit. at the U of Arizona. He learned Spanish as a boy when he and his family went to Argentina for some years. So my family here has always been interacting with Mexican-Americans, but educated ones. I remember one guy giving me a short ride on his motorcycle when I was six or seven. He went to Korea as a soldier and died in an accident. I still have a very weak tie to his family--his sister--but she lives on the other side of town. I think the Mexican-American culture with its Catholic bias is much more vibrant, fun and interesting--even stronger--than the more jejune and dissipated Anglo one. I suspect it's because so many whites moved here from elsewhere while the Mexicans were always here and Catholicism is culturally stronger than Protestantism which is much more fragmented. No Duck Dynasty in Tucson.

--Brant

[dldelancey]

I'm not sure why this isn't a requirement for all graduating high school students. I amazed by the lack of civics taught in today's schools.

[Brant Gaede]

Let the teachers take the test also.

--Brant

especially the ones who supposedly teach this stuff

[Selene]

Folks:

If each of us proposed this to their local school boards it would be a great way to start getting the concept accepted.

Clearly, the teachers and administrators should definitely have to demonstrate a knowledge of civics.

Every citizen that I have posed this to since I started this thread is completely enthusiastic about implementing the idea.

A...