Why the citizenship test is not like getting on "Jeopardy!"
Back in school, I was able to confuse a whole bunch of people into thinking that I was completely brilliant beyond measure. I was able to do this by reading something one or two times and then being able to quickly recall it on command. It was incredibly useful for tests where you had to match Clue A to Question Beta or for being able to loop the room in Around the World, and so on. The problem was that when it came to actual comprehension and synthesis of information, I was terrible. Great for whipping ass for my team at Spelling Baseball, awful when it came time to say what the author's main point was, citing examples from the text. I could recite all the moons of the gas giant planets, but couldn't tell you why you need Diet Coke to make the Mentos thing asplode in a geyser of carbonated joy. So the snowjob of Regurgitation of Knowledge on Command was a reasonable substitute for intelligence, as far as some teachers and people were concerned.
Most of the people who know me from school already knew this, and are wondering why I've revealed this particular tidbit of my personal life. I'll get to that eventually.
One of the big takeaways of the whole Burn a Koran Day thing is the difference between America and Way the Hell Over There. We have to lump it when a guy does something offensive that we don't like, and other countries are telling us about how they'd use their hate speech laws to imprison the guy, or imploring the President to "use his authority to stop the guy from doing this," which is a hilarious misinterpretation of the Constitution that neither our Attorney General, or Secretary of State or President seem in a hurry to say to that part of the world. "Sorry guys, but this big part of this document that we founded the country upon, it kinda prohibits me from doing anything. So, hey, outta luck."
Every once in a while, I see a link to "Could you pass the US citizenship test?" And so I try it, and see a handful of questions that come from a farilla magilla test. "How many Amendments to the Constitution are there?" "Who becomes President if he and the Vice-President die?" "Who is the Chief Justice of the United States?" and so on.
Here's the problem. That's the sort of test that...tests what you've read in a book. Anyone who has read the right book can pass the test. When somebody shows up at our big welcome mat and wants to partake of our wonderful freedoms and opportunities, then I expect them to embrace our culture, laws and customs.
I would like to see the equivalent of the essay question on the citizenship test. I want to be able to look into the eyes of the applicant as he asks a question like "What is it about America that you love the most?" or "Why did you leave your country of origin?" and "What does the First Amendment mean to you?" I want to make sure that the people who are being allowed to party with us know what we fought so hard for those two-hundred forty years ago. Not just that we have twenty-seven Amendments, but the reason that we have each one of them, and the reason that it says "Congress shall make no law" in so many places in that document. That we defend the speech we disagree with in order to have others there defending the speech I say that someone else doesn't like.
That should be the big lesson of the last week. Not some dipstick cult leader in Florida trying to round up publicity for his church by being a moron. Not that there are many in the mid-east who seem to be stuck back in the ninth century where the reaction to being called violent is "if you call us violent, we'll kill you" while hiding away their women until they're stoned for some crime. Welcome with open arms those who wish to partake of the great buffet of freedom and opportunity, but question whether they're here for the right reasons, and won't just revert to the ways of the country that they left behind.
Most of the people who know me from school already knew this, and are wondering why I've revealed this particular tidbit of my personal life. I'll get to that eventually.
One of the big takeaways of the whole Burn a Koran Day thing is the difference between America and Way the Hell Over There. We have to lump it when a guy does something offensive that we don't like, and other countries are telling us about how they'd use their hate speech laws to imprison the guy, or imploring the President to "use his authority to stop the guy from doing this," which is a hilarious misinterpretation of the Constitution that neither our Attorney General, or Secretary of State or President seem in a hurry to say to that part of the world. "Sorry guys, but this big part of this document that we founded the country upon, it kinda prohibits me from doing anything. So, hey, outta luck."
Every once in a while, I see a link to "Could you pass the US citizenship test?" And so I try it, and see a handful of questions that come from a farilla magilla test. "How many Amendments to the Constitution are there?" "Who becomes President if he and the Vice-President die?" "Who is the Chief Justice of the United States?" and so on.
Here's the problem. That's the sort of test that...tests what you've read in a book. Anyone who has read the right book can pass the test. When somebody shows up at our big welcome mat and wants to partake of our wonderful freedoms and opportunities, then I expect them to embrace our culture, laws and customs.
I would like to see the equivalent of the essay question on the citizenship test. I want to be able to look into the eyes of the applicant as he asks a question like "What is it about America that you love the most?" or "Why did you leave your country of origin?" and "What does the First Amendment mean to you?" I want to make sure that the people who are being allowed to party with us know what we fought so hard for those two-hundred forty years ago. Not just that we have twenty-seven Amendments, but the reason that we have each one of them, and the reason that it says "Congress shall make no law" in so many places in that document. That we defend the speech we disagree with in order to have others there defending the speech I say that someone else doesn't like.
That should be the big lesson of the last week. Not some dipstick cult leader in Florida trying to round up publicity for his church by being a moron. Not that there are many in the mid-east who seem to be stuck back in the ninth century where the reaction to being called violent is "if you call us violent, we'll kill you" while hiding away their women until they're stoned for some crime. Welcome with open arms those who wish to partake of the great buffet of freedom and opportunity, but question whether they're here for the right reasons, and won't just revert to the ways of the country that they left behind.