Do You Have What It Takes To Be An American?
Take our 4th of July citizenship test and find out!
Greetings, all. Happy Fourth of July! It seems the perfect day to ask, “Do you have what it takes to become an American citizen?”
Allow me a brief explanation. Seeking to improve my (rather miserable) conversational Spanish, I meet every week with a Cuban-born woman named Luisa, who is trying to improve her English. She is also studying to become a United States citizen.
We talk for a couple of hours in the afternoons when we see each other. When she speaks normally, in her native Spanish, it’s like a bullet train going by. Las palabras fly by so fast I can barely understand a single word. It is more or less the same for her when I talk English at my regular, albeit slower, pace. It’s sort of Spanglish, what we do. We’re both learning. It’s fun.
Luisa is a charmer. We’re both about the same age. When I begin to fade near the end of a session she always pours me a glass of jugo de naranja or some other fruit juice. She was a schoolteacher in Cuba before emigrating to the U.S. to be with her children and grandchildren, all of whom are Americanos. Her children are university-trained professionals and two of her grandsons are software engineers. All inherited her work ethic. She is very studious, very conscientious, and determined to pass her citizenship exam.
In order to become a citizen, she needs to show a grasp of basic American fundamentals of governance, civic responsibility, geography, and history. She receives a study list of 100 questions. From this list, on examination day, she will be tested on ten of those questions. She must answer six of them correctly to pass. She also must pass one-sentence reading and writing tests based on this same information. All the tests are conducted in English.
She is a diligent student, having prepared index cards with the questions on one side and the answers on the other. She has also written down the material she needs to know for her reading and writing tests. I act as test-giver, and she sits at the dining table in her tiny apartment wearing a look of intense concentration. Afterwards we check her answers to see how she has done. Come test time, she is going to ace that baby.
But how would you do? That is the subject of today’s festive Independence Day issue of Tilting West. What follows is a selection from the 100-question list. Since she cannot know what ten questions they will ask, she must study (and know) all of them. Easy ones are mixed with the more difficult, and a few of them, I think you’ll agree, are real stumpers. They are not multiple choice; that is not how the test is administered. Nor is she allowed to consult a handy-dandy portable look-up machine. Answers at bottom.
So I ask you, “Do You Have What It Takes to Become an American Citizen?”
What city was the first capital of the United States?
Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
There are three human rights stated in the Declaration of Independence. Name two of them.
Of the 13 original colonies, name the one that became the first state of the United States.
Who is on the one dollar bill?
What was the main reason America declared independence from Great Britain?
The House of Representatives has how many voting members?
Name the current Speaker of the House of Representatives.
There are how many Senators in the U.S. Senate?
Name one United States Senator from your state.
Who is the current Chief Justice of the United States?
When is Flag Day?
Name the second President of the United States.
What year was the United States Constitution formally adopted?
What territory did the U.S. buy from France in 1803?
The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers.
What three countries did the U.S. fight in World War II?
Name your U.S. (House) Representative.
The idea of self-governance is embodied in the first three words of the Constitution. What are they?
When was the Declaration of Independence signed? Date and year.
So how’d you do? One day while I was giving the test to Luisa, one of her grandsons sat in on it. “You know,” he said, “most Americans are not going to know a lot of the answers to those questions.” That’s for certain. Now, here’s a bonus question. It’s not on the citizenship test; I just made it up. Without looking at the top of this post, name the four presidents on Mount Rushmore. And for TRIPLE bonus points, name all four of them as they appear on the mountain from left to right.
Here are the answers:
1. New York City 2. Thomas Jefferson 3. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. 4. Delaware 5. George Washington 6. High taxes. Taxation without representation. 7. 435. 8. Mike Johnson 9. 100. 10. From California, Alex Padilla or Laphonza Butler. 11. John Roberts. 12. June 14. 13. John Adams 14. 1783. 15. Louisiana Territory 16. James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay were the three writers. 17. Italy, Germany, Japan 18. Here in my area, John Garamendi. You’ll have to look up the one from your area if the name escapes you. 19. We the People 20. July 4, 1776. Bonus question: From left to right, Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, Lincoln.
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