citizenship: n. a door prize

The new UK citizenship test is now being bandied about in the culture war across the pond:

Being British is not about whether you know the lyrics to God Save the Queen or can order tea in a cool accent.

It's not about your familiarity with Shakespeare, your knowledge of the Restoration or your command of the battles that forged the empire.

As far as the British government is concerned, it's about knowing how old you must be to buy a lottery ticket (answer: 16). It's about UK voltage standards (240 volts). It's about what numbers to dial for police (999) and the fire department (112).

No one's going to argue that citizens should have no familiarity with emergency services, but an 18 question trivia quiz does not a citizen make. The man who got the last word used it well:

"History binds us together, but, of course, history can also divide," says Lawrence Goldman, editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, who says new immigrants should know the basics. "There are some key moments, key figures, key experiences that bring this nation together — the first two World Wars, for example."

I have no doubt that this sort of thing grows out of historicism and relativism, two pernicious -isms which ultimately make people not only devalue their own culture and history but feel ashamed of it. There is apparently a kind of chauvinism in valuing the West's traditions of inclusiveness, openness, and rational inquiry.

By encouraging immigrants to adopt these very virtues we are apparently attacking the dignity of the cultures they might lose in the process.

To demand that an immigrant study and understand the society which he wishes to join is mutually beneficial. You're a fool if you fail to acknowledge that.

At least here in the States we still get it.

Anyone interested in playing the American version, or at least a quick, online quiz modeled somewhat on the U.S. citizenship test, here you go:

You Passed the US Citizenship Test
Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct!
posted by Dennis on 11.03.05 at 12:08 PM





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Comments

"Being British is not about whether you know the lyrics to God Save the Queen or can order tea in a cool accent.

It's not about your familiarity with Shakespeare, your knowledge of the Restoration or your command of the battles that forged the empire."

As far as I'm concerned, yes, it indeed does mean those things. A nation is its history, its heritage. It's not about voltage and lottery tickets but about Shakespeare and the Heptarchy, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, Charles Martel and Jeanne d'Arc. I am Conservative.

Right now, I'm in the process of going over a bunch of old John Birch Society booklets. Extremely informative regarding the machinations of the Communist Conspiracy. The style.

By the way, 10 out of 10. American.

In light of my last post, yours cheered me immensely.

(Perhaps I should advocate deporting all who fail the test....)

Eric Scheie   ·  November 3, 2005 01:47 PM

9 out of 10, but I don't know which one I missed.

I expect it was either the main author of the Declaration of Independence (Jefferson, but unsure) or the year the Constitution was written (1786, but I wasn't sure it wasn't 1787.)

Sigivald   ·  November 3, 2005 05:30 PM

10/10.

Aristomedes   ·  November 3, 2005 05:53 PM

1787. So you know.

B. Durbin   ·  November 3, 2005 09:50 PM

US Citizen

10/10

Ted   ·  November 3, 2005 10:26 PM


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