Last year, the state of Arizona was the first state in our country to pass the popularized Civics bill, a law changing the high school curriculum by requiring all high school students to take and pass a United States civics test to graduate. The states of Colorado, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and 5 others following Arizona, passed analogous laws. The exam is similar to the Naturalization test that immigrants are required to take when applying for citizenship. It consists of questions like:
What is the supreme law of the land?
What does the Constitution do?
The idea of self-government is in the first three words of the Constitution. What are these words?
What is an amendment
Who makes federal laws?
What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?
For …show more content…
Its main purpose is to incentivize students to take a civics class and get to know the government in which they live under. The bill hasn't progressed much since then. It failed in the Senate last April in Colorado. Senator Vicki Marble of Fort Collins said that she voted against it because "civics education" needs stronger reforms than just adding one test. A lot of people who are against the new law argue that another test isn't going to strike interest in the students towards our government, nor is it going to help them understand it. Regular History courses teach a lot about civics, and still statistics show that 3/4 of students do not know the fundamentals of United States Civics.
People who fight for it, though, argue that something needs to be done considering that American schools are made to create good American citizens, but they leave the school system without even knowing what being a citizen is. State Sen. Owen Hill, from Colorado Springs, sums up the issue by saying“The purpose of education is to create citizens -- from those citizens we have a government of the people, by the people and for the
What is the supreme law of the land?
What does the Constitution do?
The idea of self-government is in the first three words of the Constitution. What are these words?
What is an amendment
Who makes federal laws?
What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?
For …show more content…
Its main purpose is to incentivize students to take a civics class and get to know the government in which they live under. The bill hasn't progressed much since then. It failed in the Senate last April in Colorado. Senator Vicki Marble of Fort Collins said that she voted against it because "civics education" needs stronger reforms than just adding one test. A lot of people who are against the new law argue that another test isn't going to strike interest in the students towards our government, nor is it going to help them understand it. Regular History courses teach a lot about civics, and still statistics show that 3/4 of students do not know the fundamentals of United States Civics.
People who fight for it, though, argue that something needs to be done considering that American schools are made to create good American citizens, but they leave the school system without even knowing what being a citizen is. State Sen. Owen Hill, from Colorado Springs, sums up the issue by saying“The purpose of education is to create citizens -- from those citizens we have a government of the people, by the people and for the