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Del. Lee Ware, of Powhatan, has introduced the first bill for the 2025 General Assembly session, which calls for high school students to pass a test based on the one that prospective citizens take to qualify for naturalization. Ware said, “As someone who taught history and government for 32 years, this is a subject dear to my where I got much of my understanding. I was fortunate to have had excellent teachers. Passing both of those courses were then, and still are, required to get a high school diploma in Virginia. heart.” He believes that all citizens should be familiar with the way the federal government works.
When I first read this about a month ago, I thought this was an interesting idea. We hear regularly that there is a lack of understanding about basic civics, and that new American citizens have a better understanding of the basic principles of our form of government than natural- born citizens. This may or may not be true, but at least they’ve had to pass a test to prove their knowledge.
I began to think about how I learned about how American government works, and what rights and responsibilities we have as citizens. I would say that the U.S. history and government classes I took my junior and senior years in high school were My curiosity was piqued about the citizenship test, and I looked it up online. You can see the questions and the answers here: https://www. uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/ questions-and-answers/100q. pdf. If you’re applying for citizenship, you would be asked 10 questions at random from this list, and you must answer six correctly. Del. Ware’s bill says that high school students must answer 70 percent of 25 to 50 questions from the list. Still, with the questions and the answers available in advance, that really should not be a high bar.
So, if this test is really mainly going to be a rote memory exercise, is there value to it? Will it make our high school graduates better citizens? I don’t think passing this test will necessarily do that, but by making this test mandatory to obtain a diploma, it does send a message that this knowledge is important.
What it doesn’t do, and what no exam can do, is to instill in young people a sense of their rights and responsibilities as citizens. It’s all well and good to know how a bill becomes a law, but I think it’s more important that people understand their responsibilities to obey the law, to vote, to serve on juries, perhaps to even serve in the military or run for office. They should be encouraged to write their congressperson or state delegate with their concerns rather than to just complain over a beer. They need to understand that we do have rights but with those rights come responsibilities.
Having some basic civic engagement – just voting regularly – is a first step in participating in our democratic experiment. The engine of government moves slowly, but it won’t move at all if people don’t make their elected officials aware of their needs and their views. Civic engagement is a habit, and if young people are to be good citizens, they have to know the basics, but also put that knowledge to work.
As a message to young people that knowledge of our system of government is important, Ware’s proposal has merit. Whether it will mean that they truly understand is another.
