Indiana high school students should take the same civics test immigrants take to become American citizens, according to state Republican lawmaker Dennis Kruse.
Kruse, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, has proposed a new measure claiming the same test immigrants take if they want to become U.S. citizens should be given to high school students if they want to graduate, the Lafayette Journal & Courier reported.
"I believe that if we're asking someone from a foreign country to know this information, that our own citizens ought to know it," Kruse, from Auburn, told the newspaper.
Immigrants taking the naturalization test, administered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, are asked 10 out of the test's 100 questions and must get six right to pass.
If the measure is applied, public and charter high school students would take the same test, but they would have to correctly answer at least 60 of all 100 questions.
The exam includes questions including "What is the capital of the United States?", "Who vetoes bills?" and others pertaining to U.S. history, geography and government. High schoolers can take the test anytime between the eighth and 12th grade if they want to receive a diploma, Kruse told the Lafayette Journal & Courier.
More than 90 percent of immigrants who take the civics test pass. The passage rate for students in Arizona and Oklahoma who also took the test, however, was less than 5 percent, according to Sam Stone, political director of the nonprofit Civics Education Initiative, which wants the test applied nationwide.
"No matter how much knowledge you have, if you don't know how to use that knowledge within our system of government, it's not much good," Stone told the newspaper.
"Our government was designed to be run by informed, engaged citizens. We have an incredibly dangerous form of government for people who don't know how it works."
Kruse's bill, which is still being written, is not the first of its kind. Similar legislation is being considered in about 15 other states, Stone said.
Part of the blame for what Stone called a "massive shift away from civics and social studies" is the present academic focus on STEM courses, or science, technology, engineering and math. Hence the need for the civics test, Stone said.
Kruse hopes to introduce his bill after the legislative session begins Jan. 6.
