Talk about civic pride.
Last month, Newsweek asked 1,000 Americans to complete a basic U.S. citizenship test. Thirty−eight percent of them failed. The Daily administered a shortened version of the same test to 225 Tufts students in order to observe whether a narrowed demographic, specifically one confined to an institution of higher learning, would yield results reflective of greater political knowledge.
"I expect them to do pretty similarly, actually," Deborah Schildkraut, associate professor of political science, said, in conformity with a number of other members of the Tufts professoriate. Schildkraut noted a visible deficit in general political and historical knowledge even within educated circles and, more specifically, even within the political science track at Tufts.
The results of the test, however, showed that Tufts students did in fact outscore Newsweek's "average American" — by 61 percent. The subjects who participated in the Daily's abridged survey outperformed Newsweek's group by exceptionally steep margins on certain questions, including "Who was president during World War I?" to which only 20 percent of Newsweek participants but 70 percent of Tufts participants responded correctly, "Woodrow Wilson," and the question "What is the economic system in the United States?" to which only 33 percent of Newsweek's participants but 85 percent of Tufts participants replied correctly, "capitalist or market economy."
The average American did, however, stump Tufts when it came to the question, "Whom did the United States fight against during World War II?" Sixty percent of Newsweek's subjects but only 53 percent of Tufts students were able to name all three major axis powers correctly.
Moreover, the nine questions that comprised the Daily's abridged test were answered correctly by what some deemed a disappointing aggregate 38 percent of Newsweek subjects — but also by just under 62 percent of Tufts students.
Schildkraut explained that many students, and citizens in general, are simply not knowledgeable about elementary aspects of American history and politics.
"When I teach my political psychology class, which is an upper−level class, the first thing I do is give students a survey with basic knowledge. On some things they do pretty well, and on some, I'm shocked. I ask them how many people can name their representatives in congress, and very few people know," she said.
The resulting, and perhaps easy, conclusion at which many analysts have arrived is that the country's education system is to blame. Newsweek columnist Niall Ferguson, for one, pinpointed a leading cause for the magazine's findings in the school system's "boring" textbooks, which, he reported, teach children to think of history as just that — boring.
But while a naturalization test is a good indicator of a group's general political knowledge, Schildkraut said, Americans' unfamiliarity with such information implies less about their education and more about the way they make choices. The American school system does cover a lot of the test's ground at one point or another, but, after time, she said, people let go of information that's not integral to their daily lives.
"I think it's a reflection of how much people tune politics out of their lives once they're out of a class on the subject. People are busy people," she said. "There's a lot of psychology research that indicates that after some time, people begin to tune out everything, whatever topic they learn about in school."
Additionally, Dean of Academic Affairs for Arts and Sciences James Glaser pointed out, it would be difficult to glean much about the American education system from a test completed by a group of Tufts students because many Tufts students were not educated within that system.
"Because some portion of our student body are not American citizens, if they're included in your denomination that's going to have an effect on your numerator," he said. "I have some international students, and some of them don't know that much about governmental law. Hopefully they become exposed to it in college."
Even among native−born Americans, though, the school system is only one contributor to the way people accumulate political knowledge, Schildkraut said, and therefore only one potential part of the reason why so many people's mental textbooks are missing pages. Another educational tool that somehow escapes blame, she said, is the media, whose habit of targeting already−in−the−know news consumers makes it difficult for people with less political knowledge to break into an informed lifestyle.
"Media is very geared toward political insiders," Schildkraut said. "Newspapers write stories that pick up on current events and don't provide context. So much of it is soap opera about what someone said yesterday, what they said today. It's geared toward political junkies."
But, according to Steve Cohen, lecturer of education, all of these musings and theories are more or less useless because the entire citizenship test is useless itself.
"I don't think that [standardized] tests are very effective ways of telling us anything. They give us a little bit of information about factoids that people remember," he said in an email to the Daily. "Students have been asked to answer questions like these for decades. They always do badly. Then experts complain that Americans know nothing. Then they make a fuss about everyone knowing facts. Soon they go on to other things, and, in another decade or so, they suddenly discover that Americans know nothing. The same dance follows."
And indeed, tests of such nature leave little room for valid academic debate and entirely obscure their subjects' thought processes. In keeping with Newsweek's answers, for example, only students who answered that "communism" was the United States' primary concern during the Cold War were marked correct, though participants who replied "nuclear warfare" were certainly not, by definition, incorrect. Similarly, because many students defined "axis" erroneously within their answers, only those who identified Germany, Japan and Italy by name received credit for knowing America's WWII opponents, although students who replied more ambiguously may well have known the answer.
In their answers, many participants expressed doubt that the questions asked were common knowledge or, moreover, important — a sentiment with which Cohen agreed.
"People remember stuff that they need. The idea that, because most Tufts students took AP U.S. History that they remember what the Crittenden Compromise was, is, I'd bet, not true. Is it important that everyone know that? I don't think so," he said. "To think that most Americans should know the precise details of the Missouri Compromise seems a little silly."
But that's not quite fair, according to Schildkraut, Glaser and a number of students, who explained that Americans' lack of familiarity with a certain type of knowledge does not reduce that information's importance. Political knowledge is fundamental to participation within one's political realm, which is to say, one's country, Schildkraut said.
"Knowing about the structure of your government is important knowledge for citizens to have. There are times when they may need to have access to government, and it makes it easier if you know how your government works," she said.
Senior David Stern pointed out that, too often, people's lack of awareness interferes with their efforts to contribute to society in a meaningful, and respected, way.
"I think it's important for civic character and the fact that we live in an American society that we should at least know these basic things about our history," he said. "Look at Michele Bachmann. She thought that Lexington and Concord were in New Hampshire. On one hand, she's trying to be a politician, and on the other hand, she's trying to represent the real America. And if you don't know basic stuff about American history, you don't have the right to make that claim. It's dangerous."
The question that was raised most often in response to the test's results, however, was not whether its questions are important but whether people trying to obtain American citizenship should be required to pass a test that many current citizens cannot.
Cohen, along with many students who completed the test, dismissed the idea as unfair.
Glaser, however, said that, in order to be involved in American politics and society, one must be politically aware, and an application for citizenship should express an interest in political involvement.
"People should be constitutionally and governmentally literate to be full citizens in this country, so I don't think it's unfair. Given how controversial issues of immigration are, if you're going to engage in that conversation, you should have some basic knowledge," Glaser said.
Schildkraut, in agreement, sees the citizenship test as largely analogous to taking the SATs in order to get into college. Most American students were required to memorize political history in the past, she said, and people going through the process of naturalization must do just that — and are free to forget that information after the test.
"I do think its fair to ask newcomers to study them, and I think it's fair to ask native−born citizens to study them, which we do in public school. It's like a muscle," she said. "If you don't use it, you're going to forget it. Most students probably knew this at one point and then forgot it. And that's what most people trying to become citizens do: They study and then they forget it."
In Schildkraut's view, though, the question of the citizenship test's "fairness" leads to another one — one that could improve Americans' political awareness altogether: "The other question is should we ask citizens to take the test every ten years or so?"
