At the risk of stating the obvious, this country wasn’t founded as a land of submission, and the First Amendment wasn’t intended as a theory never to be put into practice. (Unlike the Stalin Constitution, which recited that “freedom of…

If you’re taking this from the standpoint of concrete historical acts, then the abolition of slavery is a far more complex issue than the unilateral acts of any American politician, involving the actions of millions of people (including the slaves themselves, who often freed themselves by rebelling or leaving; this was nearly as large a military liability for the South throughout the Civil War as the Union army was).

If you’re taking this from the standpoint of legal ritual, the Emancipation Proclamation professed to free only slaves in some of the rebelling states, and as a matter of military necessity rather than as a legal abolition of slavery. Slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment, which was passed not by the unilateral action of the President, but rather by the Congress and the legislatures of the several states, and which was not ratified until well after Lincoln’s death.

On another quibble, I wonder why Rad Geek finds it historically false that Abraham Lincoln is the expected answer to “which President freed the slaves?”. He did, after all, issue the Emancipation Proclamation, did he not?

If learning the right lessons about history and political participation is so important, doesn’t that make it more important, not less, to keep the government out of it, given that the results of bad instruction are not just stupid, but in fact dangerous?

The worst that happens with government-taught chemistry classes is that students will learn something false from an incompetant teacher and will be disabused of the notion if they ever do the extra coursework required to do anything serious in the field of chemistry. But a government-taught civics class is an invitation for an admittedly duplicitous and power-hungry State to directly propagandize a captive audience. Not all teachers will allow it to be like that, but given the direct power that governments have over educational curricula and approved materials (I’ve read some currently popular civics textbooks, and it’s not pretty), and given the incentive that most teachers have to go along with the approved curriculum most of the time, I can’t say this sounds like a promising set-up.

As for the test, the non-meaningless questions include some where the expected answers are philosophically indefensible (cf. “Where does freedom of speech come from?” Expected answer: “The Bill of Rights;” apparently all naturalized citizens are now expected to be legal positivists) or historically false (”Which President freed the slaves?” Expected answer: “Abraham Lincoln”). These sorts of myths and platitudes don’t make me think that attempts to reform the test and similar exercises, by the government that crafted this rubbish in the first place, are going to turn out as anything other than mindless propaganda.

Ed, if you think that politicians are willing to deliberately keep students ignorant in order to further their political aims, why in the world would you trust the government schools to teach people about history, the political system, the rights they should expect, how to exercise them, etc.?

A fair question. The answer is that I am a strong advocate of private schools, but as long as we’re going to have public schools - and that’s going to be always, there’s no serious chance that they’re going to be done away with anytime in the foreseeable future - we can certainly make the argument that it’s better to teach some things than to teach others. At the very least, you will have a subset of passionate teachers who would do a good job, which is better than not teaching it at all.

I notice that the sample citizenship test expects you to name the “Which President freed the slaves” (!) and that more than 10% of your grade on the test depends on your ability to recite meaningless trivia about theo-political rituals such as the flag (the first 7 questions of the test!) and the national anthem. I’m a little surprised to find no questions about the national bird, or the current state tree in your state of residence.

Yeah, the citizenship test was pretty bad. About half the questions were totally meaningless and the rest were so easy that a dog could answer them. Which makes it all the more frightening that most Americans couldn’t even pass that test, much less a good one.

Because the governing party at the time felt that it served domestic propaganda interests during the Cold War.

Ed, if you think that politicians are willing to deliberately keep students ignorant in order to further their political aims, why in the world would you trust the government schools to teach people about history, the political system, the rights they should expect, how to exercise them, etc.? Do you go to used-car salesmen for consumer product testing, too?

P.S.: I notice that the sample citizenship test expects you to name the “Which President freed the slaves” (!) and that more than 10% of your grade on the test depends on your ability to recite meaningless trivia about theo-political rituals such as the flag (the first 7 questions of the test!) and the national anthem. I’m a little surprised to find no questions about the national bird, or the current state tree in your state of residence.