The stripes on the US flag represent states, not colonies.

Vermont and Kentucky were admitted as the 14th and 15th states, in 1791 and 1792 respectively. In 1795 two stripes were tardily added to the flag, for a total of 15. In 1818 the flag reverted to 13 stripes, perhaps after someone realized that with the addition of more states the stripes would become hard to distinguish. After that date, the strips represented the original states only.

This would seem to be a bit of vexillological trivia, were it not for the fact that “THE Star-Spangled Banner” of Key’s poem is a 15-striper. The 15-stripe Star-Spangled Banner (a.k.a. the McHenry flag, named for Fort McHenry, which Key witnessed being bombarded) was the flag flown on the U.S.S. Constitution when she dismasted the H.M.S. Guerriere, the flag Perry wrapped himself in shortly before winning the Battle of Lake Erie, the flag flown over the fortress at Derna after it was captured from the Pasha of Tripoli, and the flag carried to the Pacific by Lewis & Clark - not a flag which should be overlooked.

Possibly the test is administered…by a ‘contractor’, replete with a badge?  Of which, could care less when a legitimate challenge to specific questions/answer is made.  And quite frankly said test administrators, won’t bother to FIND OUT.

The state of AR, also has a suspect ‘test’, a requirement for employment applicants, ~aptitude rating~ with a gold, silver, or bronze, to be considered into the state employment agency’s ‘fast track’.  I challenged a few question/answers, even made an ‘up the chain’ phone call….what a waste of time, and effort.

The tricky excuse for these things is a question:  What is the acceptable level of testing accuracy?  YOUR answer will be different than THEIRS.

Congratulations and Welcome!

Then there is Question 12: What is the “rule of law”?

Posner is wrong, and the law professors are dolts.  The best answer is the 4th one “No one is above the law,” but all four are acceptable

I was born abroad of American Citizen parents (my dad was in the service).  Before going overseas again in 1964, when I was 16, I had to get my Certificate Of Citizenship (proof that I was a citizen) so I’d be sure to be able to come back into the US.

Although I wasn’t “Naturalized,” I did have to take the oath of citizenship, forsaking foreign princes and potentates, among others.

The oath was administered not in a mass ceremony, but at the desk of the fellow that processed my paperwork at Fort Monroe, VA.  Ahh, the solemnity and formality of the occasion.  It was his last duty of the day, and as I stood with my right hand raised ready to answer “I do,” he administered the oath—while cleaning up his desk. 

I left as a confirmed, validated Citizen of the US, and he left with a clean desk.  A good ending for both of us.

Yea, if you would really study our history, starting with Howard Zinn’s People History of the USA, you would see we are the most despicably modern nation ever created. A country built on slavery, we do not have direct voting, only 535 people vote for the president. We systematically killed most of the native peoples, slavery written into the constitution, our brutalizing the blacks well into the 20th century, the most intolerant countries towards religions, ask the Mormon, Catholics, now the Muslims, a history of brutal attacks on labor, the backing of all sorts of dictators over the world, no health care for our citizens, an uneducated populace. Women couldn’t vote until 1920, how’s that for a great country. Learn how each wave of immigrants were brutalized and discriminated against, and for all this nonsense about raising yourself up by the boot straps you have about 2 percent owning most or all of the wealth. We have a pitiful retirement system and half the country wants to eliminate that. We do not take care of our poor and disadvantaged, and we are constantly at war in foreign countries killing and maiming and a national mentality that reveres war and the ones that do the killing under the banner of patriotism. No, a country that has the Trumps of the world as paragons our so called exceptional-ism is a sick nation indeed.

When a German friend of mine took the test many years ago, she was asked, “Who is known as the father of his country?”  She panicked, froze and forgot.  The examiner took pity on her and gave her a tiny hint: “Geooooorge.”  She answered correctly and passed.

Being an American citizen by birth a little over six decades ago, I thought it would be interesting to go to the website and take the test.  Americans seem to need simplistic answers which is why we are taught myths in school.  It is perhaps best exemplified by an example.  One of the questions is:  Name one problem that led to the Civil War.  Among the four answers are Slavery (allegedly the correct answer) and Westward Expansion (allegedly incorrect).  However, it was the argument over how slavery was to be treated in those territories created by westward expansion that was a root cause.  If there wasn’t westward expansion the issue might not have arisen.  I would also quibble with some of the other questions but the test is multiple choice leaving no room for nuanced answers.

Congrats!!!!

“She did pay attention when she asked whether I was a habitual drunkard, a polygamist, a drug-smuggler, a felon, a tax-evader. “

What did you say?  What are the correct answers???

I think for the last part one acceptable answer is “I’m very wealthy. I pay no taxes”

“Reading the letter, I began to cry. I had spent more than one-quarter of my life hoping to become American, and I was suddenly overwhelmed by the honor and the significance of the moment. The place I have called home for 12 years was finally claiming me as well.”

Welcome.

Oh, by the way, if Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin get elected to executive office next time around, can I have your place in Canada? Pleeeeease???

Bruce, as you said, the test is multiple choice leaving no room for nuanced answers. If this test had been designed for an elementary school course in history, the question are about what would be expected from one. I’ve read bits and pieces of my kids’ history books (kids now in 7th and 9th grades) over the years, and they are loaded full with errors, oversimplifications, and prejudicial passages based on author bias.

To new citizens: this is about how history is taught in the USA. Maybe you will take the effort to become well read, and will know better. The Civil War: no one sat in a smoke-filled room scheming on how best to move the conflict about governmental policies from the halls of Congress to the muddy fields of Virginia. The Civil War had no rational cause. No one planned it. It began when emotion reached a pitch where anger and wild surmises drowned out the voice of reason.

The flash point was never over slavery itself. It was over the treatment of slavery by westerners in the territories; by northerners who had made contact with fugitive slaves; and by northern politicians and moralists who berated slaveholders for their impassioned defense of the institution. The slave owners saw themselves as honorable gentlemen. The honor code of the day told them that insults to their honor, after a point, deserved a violent response. In a nutshell, that is how the leaders of the South justified the war (at least to themselves). Of course propaganda flourished, as it always will (truth is the first casualty of war). Both sides fed on the propaganda, most of the soldiers took it to heart, and it served to prolong the war.

@Tobias - re: German & U.S. citizenship. It IS (allegedly) possible to retain your German citizenship and become a naturalized citizen of another country, BUT you must submit the required waiver forms & receive confirmation from German gov’t BEFORE beginning the process in your other country. Just looked into that last month prior to my German fiancee coming to the U.S.
Can totally understand wanting to keep both though - don’t know why anybody’d give up an EU passport & potentially ruin ability to return to country of their birth (unless, y’know, it’s N. Korea or something). Honestly, the entire process seems so “18th Century” & out of touch w our modern globalized world.

I must point out that the question about being a member of the Communist (or other similar) party is really silly since there is a card-carrying member of the Socialist Democrat party in Congress right now. He is listed as an “independent” for voting purposes.

Sad that we cannot even present our basic underpinnings correctly. Even sadder that we are actively encouraging people to learn by rote and NOT by actually understanding the material. Unlike Ms. Linzer, most potential citizens will never look up the material or read further. Those flash cards are it for them. They won’t follow up later, if they are out of school.

While telling people to give the official answers is a means to an end, wouldn’t it be better to present the CORRECT answers to begin with?

Thank you for a tear inspiring article and the many informative comments that came after.  Welcome to our struggle to make ourselves better together despite varied thoughts on where we must go to get there.  The seemingly simple test you describe and abundance of intelligent answers illustrate just how complicated that can be.

Congrats.  It’s clear you’ve been involved in making us better already and earned your citizenship through more than the quiz. 

A proud fellow citizen who did it the easy way -for me if not for my mother.
-John C.

It is quite simple: “Rule of Law” versus “Rule of Man.” We must obey the “law,” not any particular man - no matter who he is. In old Europe, the Lord could pass summery judgment upon their peasants. They ruled by fiat. That was the rule of man. No man has rule over any American Citizen. Our representatives must pass a law, then we are ruled by that law.The Judiciary is only supposed to interpret the law and implement the law. Of course, now we have the Rule of Obama, which bypasses the Judiciary, and makes its own judgments about which law the Executive Branch thinks is Constitutional and therefore will, or will not, enforce, instead of upholding all laws, as written by the Legislative and upheld by the Judiciary as Constitutional, which the President took and Oath of Office to do.

@ Elizabeth. I agree. What is more amazing is the new book that just came out showing that Obama actually was a member of the Communist Party when in college, so Obama would have to have lied if he had, had to take the Citizenship Oath! (Link to be found at boortz.com. Note: This will never be reported by the Mainstream Press/Democrat Party Continuum.)

@don fahrney. You make at least two factually incorrect points. Hopefully, this might warrant that you rethink some of your whole hate America bias. 1) “the most intolerant countries (sic) towards religions” - Plenty of other countries are more intolerant of non-majority religions, while the US has religious tolerance written into its Constitution. Tolerance is integral to the practice and teaching of two of our populace’s largest religions - Christianity and Judaism. Try being a Christian in any Muslim or Communist Country, if you want to experience state sponsored and personal oppression! 2) “...We do not take care of our poor and disadvantaged…” - The LARGEST segment of the US Federal Budget is for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, not to mention that Americans privately are among the worlds most charitable people with what little earnings they are allowed to keep.

Congratulations!  And thank you for the work you do.  It’s organizations like pro publica that will save our democracy.

Congratulation dear Dafna .... !
Welcome o this great melting of immigrants in this country… !
: )

Before I became a citizen in 1994 my kids delighted in telling their friends “My Daddy is an alien !”

Alas, no longer :)

Why in the world would any Canadian want to become an American citizen in this day and age? You’re *Canadian* for heaven’s sake!

I’m following these comments, or have been since I made one a ways back. I’ve been a small town newspaper columnist for quite a few years, and the question, “Why would anyone want, in this day and age, care to become a citizen” (of the US, that is), seems to have become a recurring theme in recent years. In fact, I believe that if you’d do the polling, you’d find a lot of people in many countries would jump at the chance to obtain citizenship somewhere else.

There might be a simple enough fix, if the right people in diplomatic circles would take notice. Why not set up an international citizenship exchange, along the lines of a free trade agreement? Each country could (by treaty) set up an exchange rate with any other: Canada and the US might agree to trade citizens at par, for example. Even governments, obtuse institutions if there ever were any, ought to be able see the value in trading their own malcontents (whom they likely see as political troublemakers) for people from somewhere else with more positive and supportive attitudes. A win-win situation, as I see it.

Hello from Manila! Congratulations, Dafna. I’m not an American citizen but I do come from a country that was once a US colony and still very pro-American. And I am aghast at some of the official answers! It’s only past 7:30 a.m. here and already I had my laughs for the day. Take care.

Norm

PS: I’m a journalist and writer by profession, by the way. Cheers.

Can I have your Canadian passport?

If these things might have been happened here in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Kingdom) then i might have contributed more to this country.  Even basic needs are denied like right to education.  If there is any case against you, you cannot appoint any lawyer to protect you.  You are not allowed to dress like them, nor you are allowed to have equal right.  You are not allowed to bring your parents here even on visit.  I’m facing here in Saudi Arabia since staying for 14 years.  We are not allowed to bring our wife even though we earn more then the Saudi’s earn.  THERE IS TOTAL VOILATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN SAUDI ARABIA.

@ Mike Wilson:

Very well said!  I was actually going to write about the Supremacy Clause as well, but since you covered it already, I’ll simply congratulate Ms. Linzer on her citizenship and welcome her to this amazing country!

As a citizenship teacher, I am painfully aware of how many of the questions are incorrect or incomplete. Question 82 reads: “Before he was President, Eisenhower a general. What war was he in?” The question should be “In which war did he hold this rank?” Eisenhower was a veteran of both WWI and WWII. When WWI broke out, Eisenhower was a recent graduate of West Point, and distinguished himself as an officer in that war. For all its problems, this test is an improvement over the last one. Also, this test was drawn up by a committee who could often not agree on certain answers. Thus question 88 asks “Name one of the longest rivers in the US.” since geographers on the committee couldn’t agree whether the Missouri was a tributary to the Mississippi or a river that exceeded the length of the Mississippi. There were other similar political issues concern others of the questions.

Thanks for your article. My mother was so proud of becoming a US citizen, that one of my earliest memories was on the day after she became a citizen she talked herself into a ticket. She had dropped my sisters off at school and made a left turn out of the school which was illegal. The policeman who pulled her over said not to worry he would give her just a warning as she was English.  She berated him and told him she was now an American Citizen,  and she got the ticket with a smile.

I’m hoping to give up my US citizenship to move to Canada.

Welcome!

Great article.  You found different errors than I did.  My favorite error was about Dwight Eisenhower:  A 1915 graduate of West Point, Eisenhower served in the US Army in both WWI AND WWII….I’ll bet you only get credit for the WWII answer.

As somebody who was born,  went to school and then to college in the Soviet Union, my favorite part of question was whether I was ever a member of a Communist party? Yep. We all were. The grandsons and granddaughters of Grandfather Lenin (Oktyabryata) at age 7, young pioneers at age 10 and members of the Young Communist League (Komsomol) at 14. Every single person who came here from the former Eastern block, Vietnam, China etc. before 1991 of in the early 90s was at some point affiliated with some kind of Communist organization…
Btw, I did love my questions too. The officer asked me to name the capital of the United States, what state borders Canada and to name one of two biggest rivers in the US. And for the written part I had to write «We pay taxes». Then read it aloud and I was approved…