It appears that the Conservative Party in the UK, seeking some patriotic stunt to distract people from economic woes and divisions in the coalition, is rewriting the test for people seeking citizenship. Out will go all the questions about practicalities - how to access government services; how to get insurance; how to read the gas meter etc. - and in will come questions about traditional British history and the national anthem. The man who prepared the original citizenship test refused 'both in principle and on grounds of practicality', to include questions on history; since he thought it unfair for the test to be one which 80% of native born citizens would fail.

So what is it important that new citizens know? Should they be required to take a test to acquire citizenship, and if so what should be on it? Are questions about Winston Churchill and William Shakespeare (or George Washington and Mark Twain) more important that questions about practical day-to-day life in the country?

I'd include both.

It really depends on what citizenship is for, though. If it's for a national-identity thing, then the history is important. If it's essentially permanent residency, then it's not.

Citizenship gives you more rights than pemanent residency - the right to vote, for example, and it further means that your right to residency can never be revoked.

Citizenship, to me at least, is a legal category. I don't think it's relevant to identity, though others may disagree. Even if we agree that's relevant though, I'm not sure what all this history has to do with national identity. I think I know more history that the average bear, but they were talking about inserting questions on people like Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who I only heard of for the first time a few months ago, and would promptly have forgotten if not for his stupid name; and on some poet I've never heard of and whose name I have already forgotten since I read the article this morning.

If most British people don't know these things, what do they have to do with British national identity?

My husband is currently studying for citizenship in the US, and the proposed test described, caffeine, is essentially the US test. Lots of history questions, some government questions, a number of references to the national anthem and the pledge and so on. Frankly, the current UK test sounds magically practical after looking over Ridcully's study guides.

I think the point of new citizen tests is (or should be) to fill gaps in country spezific knowledge, that native citizens should not have, due to the local education system, and due to living in the country since birth. It gets especially tricky, if many natives have such gaps, due to a failure of the eduction system.

What exactly should go in, would depend on the country in question (and on the country of orign, since that might be similiar or very different), but i can see reasons to put something in from the following areas (the list is not intended to be complete)

Goverment-Theory: The basic philosophical principles the goverment is founded on, such as what is the relationship between a citizen and the state. The basic structrue, such as the split between branches of the goverment.

Goverment-Practice: What services can you actually expect of the goverment? Where to ask or look for spezific information on goverment services. How to properly interact with a goverment official in practice?

Cultural values: Like what lifestyles are considered the idealized model, what are accepted by large consensus, what are currently contested in cultural "wars", which are shunned?

Local symbolism: Thats where some history gets in. Basically what you need to understand, why some topics are hot button issues, without rationally needing to be so. Like it seems that the first thing many US citizens think of, when they hear secession, is the South and slavery. Or in Germany you propably should not propose something, that for the average German is connected to national socialism. So you'd have history, that has emotional content for the general population and that is either not well known outside, or where the narrative of outsiders tend to be different then that of natives.

America's identity is as a nation of immigrants. The theory is that you don't have to look, act or believe a certain way to be an American, but you do need to love, support and be loyal to America. Our citizenship process is designed to create a core American identity within new immigrants, including a sense of history and pride.

Historically, I believe, one became a British citizen when your country was conquered by Britain, which is a different sort of relationship. Maybe Britain is moving more towards the American model.

EDIT: Also, I don't think the practical-style British test would fly here for a number of reasons. I think most Americans would find insulting the idea that people would need to show practical competency in order to become citizens. And we're also strongly individualist and independent, we expect people to be able to learn those things for themselves.

In addition, on the subject of government services, the idea is that immigrants coming here are supposed to be "value added." We --I'm speaking generally here --don't want immigrants coming and using government services, sucking at the teat, so to speak. They are supposed to be here to get a chance to make their own opportunities and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Not even liberal Americans want immigrants coming to be added to welfare rolls.

This is all mythology of course, but so often that's the truly important thing.

*shrug* As the spouse of an immigrant, I think that the history lesson required is lame. He's learning stuff kids learn and don't retain in school. It's a little insulting, actually, that they're asking him who George Washington is, but they don't want to know if he knows the signage on the road or if he knows how to apply for a social security card. The government lesson is okay, since he'll have the right to vote, but I think he's a bit flummoxed on why he has to know who Abraham Lincoln is to be a citizen.

In the mid-to-late nineteenth century, European immigrants' first stop after entering the country was often the Democratic party headquarters in New York, where they registered to vote. I find it somewhat ironic that the institution of a citizenship test in this country happened to coincide with the removal of the requirement that newly naturalized citizens be white.

As you may expect, I am opposed to citizenship tests of any kind. But even worse than having a citizenship test is having a citizenship test that only some citizens have to take. I don't give a hoot what's on the test, if it's applied to everyone.

Requirering a goverment service is not the same as being on welfare. If you want a driving licence you use a goverment service. If you found a business and register it with the IRS (or whatever the correct insitution is) you make an apply to a goverment agency.

And what to do, if there is a discrepancy with the service you think you ought to get, and with what you actually get, without getting branded for a troublemaker, is not always a trivial question and different in different areas.

I want to make it clear that I was talking about the perceivable symbolism of the test, not the actuality of it. In actuality, there's a lot of government services that aren't welfare. But symbolically America conceptualizes desired immigrants as bringing external resources into the country, which means that teaching them how to access services --no matter what they are --runs counter to the desired symbolism.



Although my take on the citizenship test was meant as description, not endorsement, I do very much think someone ought to know who Abraham Lincoln is before becoming a citizen. America only has two hundred or so years of history as a nation, which is not a lot to master, and the effects of something as recent as the Civil War are still very much with us. I'm not much of a historian or a history fan, but I do believe that ignorance of history is dangerous.

Reading signage or applying for a social security card are just googlable details. Knowing the history of your adopted homeland means understanding something about the nature and character of the nation to which you are transferring your allegiance. Even in the case where the histories are censored or otherwise tampered with, it still tells you how your new nation wishes to perceive itself.

The trouble with an old country is that its history is too long-winded and bloody-minded to condense into a neat, idealistic founding story like the United States's. What messages are prospective British citizens supposed to take from its history? That it had a lot of kings, some of which killed each other, had a brief kingless period, and then decided that it would rather have kings after all, only with less killing? That it fought France multiple times over hundreds of years for reasons that hardly anybody today would care about? That England united the United Kingdom by war, more war, and strategic marriage? That Britain once took over a large chunk of the earth's surface, and then went broke in World War II and lost it all? It's hard to think of a British history test that wouldn't just become an arbitrary collection of names and dates.

Whilst this history may be useful, the fact remains that many, if not most, native born citizens do not possess this knowledge. Newspapers love to report stories every few months when a survey reveals that 'three-quarters of 16-24 year-olds don't know that D-Day was the start of the invasion of Europe in 1944', or "More than a third of adults don't know Charles Darwin was English"; or "A third of 16-34 year olds don't know that William the Conquerer won the Battle of Hastings" (since these polls tend to focus on the young, I should also point out that the last link contains the nugget that 22% of pensioners were unaware of the Roman conquest of Britain).

Knowing these things tells you nothing of the nature and character of your adopted homeland, because the people who live there already don't know it. It is not what informs their national and cultural identity.

I know it's far from trivial to come up with a specific test, but different historic events have different amount of significance. It's not really a matter of how much time has passed since then, but how much baggage is left over in current political and social events.

Civil wars are almost always important, since there will be people, who trace themselfs back to all sides. Kitoba has already mentioned the US civil war, Austria had it's civil war between the world wars.

Otherwise there are usually historic events, that the natives use to create a narrative about the national character. I don't think there is much more in countries with a longer history, the older countries just have more history, that is not used for narratives.

The thing is, there are different narratives - who gets to decide what's important for Britishness (or Austrianess, or Americaness)?
If your parents were traditional British lefties, then there's a good chance your historical narrative of Britain might have gone from the Peasant's Revolt, to the Levellers and Diggers in the Civil War, through the Peterloo massacre and the Chartists on to the suffragettes. This is a very British narrative, but others could easily be (and often are) constructed that avoid all of this.

On your point about civil wars - it's only true if they were recent enough. There is no residual bad blood over the English civil war, and I doubt there are many outside the aristocracy who know who their relatives were in the seventeenth century.

If it's events that only historicans and true believers know about it's most likely not that important.

If nearly everyone agrees on a narrative, but the event is widely known, it's basically a matter of local folcore. Important but not very.

If it's a historic events, where there are competing narratives, as to whos hat had what shade of grey, it is most likely important.