Elementary school, grades, tests, and a meme for good measure

[gerisullivan]

Back when I was in elementary school, we were graded on "citizenship" as well as the usual subjects of math, English, geography, and such. A good citizenship grade didn't mean you knew anything more about U.S. citizenship than a bad grade did. It was really just a reflection of how easy it was for the teacher to deal with you, how cooperative you were, and how well you adapted to being in school. There were no tests, quizzes, or worksheets that measured your citizenship knowledge; your grade was whatever the teacher's gut suggested it should be. It always seemed like a dumb, unimportant, arbitrary grade to me.

Fast forward 45 years, and we have memes and quizzes to answer the question those grade school report cards never did. Tonight I found my way to this one via dave_gallaher's posts from last November:

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct!

Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?

I'm pleased, and surprised. I guessed on a couple, and figured I'd missed at least one of them. Sure, they're very basic, but the devil's in the details, don'cha know?

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I found the questions all very easy, but one answer, that Congress - not the president - declares war, seems now to be purely nominal, the way that the Electoral College is nominal.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Yep. I guessed between 1786 and 1787 for the year the Constitution was written. The weird one, especially in light of your comment, was that I wasn't sure the President had been Commander in Chief of the military from the start. That seemed like something that might have changed along the way. Enough else certainly has.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Nope. It's in the plain text. 1787 was the year of ratification. The Federalist Papers pretty much mean it had to have been at least the year after before it could have been ratified, so the choices given made 1786 the only possible correct answer.

Which wasn't one of the original 13 was the closet I came to guessing, and I could rule out two of them.

TK

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Same here, only I proceeded to guess wrong. Went back and tried my second guess and they said I got 10 out of 10 that time. I wish these tests would, like, bother to tell me what I got wrong. This time it was easy enough to guess for myself.

[carbonel]

Exactly the same for me.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

"The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States" - Article 2, Section 2, paragraph 1, so it's been there from the beginning.

What bothers me is the number of people who seem to have forgotten all the words in that after the first seven. "We must support the President: he's our Commander in Chief." No, he isn't: he's only the Commander in Chief of the serving military. And all that means is that he is the ultimate source of their military orders.

[madfilkentist]

Got an easy 10 out of 10. I paused on No. 6 because I wondered if there might have been a Commander in Chief before the Constitution. Though just about every history book lists Washington as the first President of the United States, but it actually was Samuel Huntington.

I haven't heard the "he's our Commander-in-Chief" line before, except perhaps from idiots also claiming that Saddam Hussein destroyed the World Trade Center with his orbital laser, but it's very scary that people could say that.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Sorry, no: Huntington was not President of the United States. He was President of the United States, in Congress Assembled, an entirely different office with a confusingly similar title. And if you follow the link above, which is the one in his Wikipedia entry, you will find a Wikipedia article carefully explaining that they are different offices.

Another myth Wikipedia handily disposes of is the story that there was a guy who was President for one day. All that's true is that he later claimed to have been President for one day.

[madfilkentist]

There was no other President of the United States at the time, so I think it was legitimate to call the POTUSICA the POTUS. Granted, he didn't have nearly the powers of the President of the U.S. under the Constitution.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

No. All that "there was no other President of the US at the time" means is that no possibility of confusion existed at the time when they shortened the title to "President of the United States." Obviously the possibility of confusion between them exists retroactively now, as is being demonstrated.

The implication that it was a continuing office to which the Constitution merely granted some additional powers is entirely false. They were two totally different offices with similar titles.

The reason the delegates to the Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention were so fond of the title "President" is that many of them had gone to colleges whose heads had that title.

[madfilkentist]

You seem quite fond of straw men. I never said anything about continuity of the office, which is irrelevant. The president-for-a-day story is equally irrelevant; it's as if I argued against Washington's first-president status by pointing out that he never confessed to chopping down a cherry tree.

If your point is the academic one that the exact title of these presidents wasn't "President of the United States," then you're correct on that point. But that's like arguing that there aren't any "Congressmen" (or "Congresspersons") because their correct title is "Senator" or "Representative." It's academic hairsplitting.

[redbird]

No, the point is that the mere fact that he was called "president" doesn't make him "president of the United States" in any meaningful sense, any more than Ezra Stiles was president of the United States (he was president of Yale College). Not only was the title different, the powers of the office and how he was selected were entirely different.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I never said anything about continuity of the office

Actually, you did. You introduced this topic by writing, "Though just about every history book lists Washington as the first President of the United States, but it actually was Samuel Huntington." This is false. George Washington was the first President of the United States. Huntington held a totally different earlier office with a confusingly similar title.

Had you merely said that there was an earlier office with a similar title, isn't that interesting, that would have been enough. Instead you stated that "just about every history book" is wrong. They're not wrong; you're wrong in calling them wrong.

I did not bring up the president-for-a-day story as evidence on this one way or another. (I put it in a different paragraph which began with the words "Another myth ..." - surely this should have been enough to indicate that I was changing the subject? Apparently not.) I brought it up because I thought it might be of interest to someone with your apparent interest in presidential trivia. My mistake.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

I got 10 out of 10 also - the only one I hesitated on was the same as yours: the year the Constitution was written but I got that one too. *whew* Might come in handy if there's ever a question about dual citizenship or something :->

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct!

Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?

[lauriemann.livejournal.com]

I got 9 out of 10. Not bad seeing as we never had a citizenship or civics class when I was in school.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I missed two! I didn't realize it took that long to ratify the constitution and had to guess between Vermont and New Hampshire, not remembering east coast lay-out very well.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It took nine months to ratify the Constitution, and another ten months after that to organize the new government: elect an Electoral College the new form of Congress, and then a President, and get the latter two to NYC to begin work. Pretty fast for the slow transit and communication of those days, actually.

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

It was a relief to get all of the questions right. :-) I guess that means I can stay.

(What is troubling, btw, is that the study materials for the current U.S. citizenship test omit freedom of the press from the freedoms ensured by the First Amendment!)

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I only got six out of ten. I am a bad citizen, it said so. I wasn't surprised by the result, I rarely retain information that doesn't interest me.

Which means, of course, you never want me on your Trivial Pursuit team.

[dinogrl.livejournal.com]

Dave got the quiz from me, to which I scored 10/10. Whew. Considering I used to teach High School Government, that was a relief. As for "Citizenship" grades, they are still very much there on the report cards, at least at the elementary level, which I am doing now...

[redbird]

Ten out of ten, and I was thinking "that's easy"--but my degree is in history, and I grew up in one of the original 13 states, the one that Vermont used to be part of. I'm sure my mother and grandparents were asked more questions, and I doubt things have been made significantly easier since the 1940s (which is when my mother and her family became citizens).

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

New York, New Hampshire, and (believe it or not) Connecticut all laid claim to the land of Vermont before it became a state. (Connecticut also laid claim to part of what is now Ohio: considering that Connecticut also gave us the Bush family and Joe Lieberman, there may be something in the water there.) This is one of the reasons Congress decided to cut the knot and make it a new state. Probably the students of all three are taught that Vermont used to be part of their state.

[redbird]

Interesting. (I seem to recall that the California grade school texts and workbooks I was working on last year also said it had been part of New York, but that proves little.)

Hmm, The Canadian Side Of My Family Must've Gotten In The Way...

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 8 out of 10 correct!

Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I passed, too, although it wasn't that hard!

[akicif.livejournal.com]

9/10 - the one I didn't get was which state wasn't one of the original 13.