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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, APRIL 3, 2017
We the pupils: More states
teach founding US documents
By MATT O’BRIEN
Associated Press
NORTH SMITHFIELD, R.I.
— Should U.S. high school stu-
dents know at least as much about
the Declaration of Independence,
the Constitution and the Federal-
ist papers as immigrants passing an
American citizenship test?
In a growing number of school
systems, having such a basic knowl-
edge is now a graduation require-
ment. But states are taking differ-
ent approaches to combating what’s
seen as a widespread lack of knowl-
edge about how government works.
Kentucky last week and Arkan-
sas on March 16 became the latest of
more than a dozen states since 2015
that have required the high school
social studies curriculum to include
material covered by the 100 ques-
tions asked on the naturalization
exam. Lawmakers in other states,
including Minnesota, are hoping
to foster even deeper understand-
ing of the fundamentals of Amer-
ican democracy by adding a full
course to study its most important
documents.
“Rights might be inherent, but
ideas need to be taught,” said Maida
Buckley, a retired classroom teacher
in Fairbanks, Alaska, who testi-
fied last year to an Alaskan legis-
lative task force on civics educa-
tion. “When you have a system of
government that’s based on ideas,
espoused in the Declaration of Inde-
pendence and carried out with a
working document in the Constitu-
tion, those ideas need to be taught.”
It’s a bipartisan cause, and in
many states such bills are jointly
introduced by Republicans and
Democrats. But proponents’ moti-
vations vary from dismay about
AP Photo/Steven Senne
High school students Jackson Laferriere, left, and Noah Lemoine fill
out work sheets as teacher Natalie O’Brien, top center, speaks with
students during a civics class called “We the People,” at North Smith-
field High School in North Smithfield, R.I. More states are requiring
graduating high school students to know at least as much about the
U.S. founding documents as immigrants passing a citizenship test.
the lack of participation in local
school boards and town halls to con-
cerns about how Republican Presi-
dent Donald Trump and his support-
ers view the power of the executive
branch.
“We clearly have seen there is
a serious civics deficiency in this
country, all the way up to the top, the
very top,” said Rhode Island Dem-
ocratic state Rep. Gregg Amore, a
longtime high school history teacher
who is co-sponsoring legislation that
contends the “survival of the repub-
lic” depends on Americans under-
standing its principles and history.
A campaign by the Scottsdale,
Arizona-based Joe Foss Institute has
led many states to pass laws requir-
ing students to know what’s on the
citizenship test.
“It’s not a panacea or silver bul-
let, but it’s a step forward,” said the
group’s Lucian Spataro, who said
17 states have adopted the model
or something similar. “You have to
learn the basics before you can have
the higher-level discussions.”
Other civics education boosters
say such a mandate is too simplistic.
“If you do something like that,
people are going to start teaching to
the test and teaching a game of Triv-
ial Pursuit,” said Charles Quigley,
executive director of the Calabasas,
California-based Center for Civic
Education. “Kids are already tested
to death.”
The Rhode Island bill, introduced
by a Republican from North Smith-
field, a conservative town where
Trump is popular, is partly inspired
by a ninth-grade class taught at
North Smithfield High School. The
honors class uses the “We the Peo-
ple” curriculum developed by Quig-
ley’s group. Students participate in a
national competition in which they
must orally defend their ideas.
On a March afternoon, teenag-
ers stood at their classroom’s lec-
tern one by one, debating whether a
California police officer can search
a suspected gang member’s smart-
phone without a warrant.
As they argued, some cited lan-
guage from the U.S. Constitution’s
Fourth Amendment. Others looked
to Supreme Court Justice Louis
Brandeis’ 1928 dissenting opinion
in a wiretapping case.
Their teacher, Natalie O’Brien,
gently prodded them to think crit-
ically and tap into more than 200
years of American history and legal
philosophy. She didn’t tell them
that, in 2014, a unanimous Supreme
Court ruled in the California case
that police may not generally search
the cellphones of people they arrest
without first getting search warrants.
“Someone’s going to channel
James Madison, right?” she said.
“What would Brandeis be saying
about this particular decision? What
would the founders be saying?”
North Smithfield High student
Megan Skinner said she didn’t pay
much attention to politics before
O’Brien’s class, but the 15-year-old
now said she now uses the founding
U.S. documents as a guide as fam-
ily and friends debate the Trump
presidency.
“It gives us an entirely new per-
spective on all the events that are
going on,” Skinner said. “You see
all these things in the news, and
especially about the election, and
all the things that are going on with
the executive orders he passed, the
travel bans. Before this class, we
wouldn’t have understood these
things.”
CAN YOU PASS THE US
CITIZENSHIP TEST?
Associated Press
In a growing number of states, high school
graduates are being required to know at least
as much about U.S. founding documents as
immigrants passing the citizenship test. Can
you ace it?
An applicant must correctly answer six of 10
questions, selected from 100 possible ques-
tions, to pass the civics portion. A sample test,
with the answers at the bottom:
QUESTIONS
1. What does the Constitution do?
2. The idea of self-government is in the first
three words of the Constitution. What are these
words?
3. What is an amendment?
4. What do we call the first 10 amendments to
the Constitution?
5. How many amendments does the Constitu-
tion have?
6. What are two rights in the Declaration of
Independence?
7. Under our Constitution, some powers belong
to the federal government. What is one power
of the federal government?
8. The Federalist Papers supported the
passage of the Constitution. Name one of the
writers.
9. There are four amendments to the Constitu-
tion about who can vote. Describe one of them.
10. What is one right or freedom from the First
Amendment?
ANSWERS
1. Sets up the government, defines the govern-
ment and protects basic rights of Americans
2. We the People
3. A change or an addition to the Constitution
4. The Bill of Rights
5. 27
6. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness
7. To print money, to declare war, to create an
army or to make treaties
8. James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John
Jay (under the collective pseudonym Publius)
9. Citizens 18 and older can vote; you don’t
have to pay to vote; any citizen can vote, a
male citizen of any race can vote
10. Speech, religion, assembly, press, petition
the government
SOURCE: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services
Cormorants: Corps reported killing 2,982 adult birds in 2016
Continued from Page 1A
birds and oiled eggs — a pro-
cess that prevents the eggs from
hatching — in 5,089 nests. In
2016, the Corps reported a total
of 2,982 adult birds killed.
Cormorant populations
So far there haven’t been
any changes in populations
elsewhere that state biolo-
gists can directly attribute
to management activities on
East Sand Island. Drawing a
straight line from the Colum-
bia River estuary to changing
cormorant populations farther
down the coast is difficult to
do anyway.
“If we do see increases at
the Oregon Coast colonies,
we would be curious to know
how this might be related
to activities on the Colum-
bia River,” said state biolo-
gist and avian predation coor-
dinator James Lawonn. But,
he added, “cormorant colo-
nies naturally fluctuate quite
a bit.”
The Department of Fish
and Wildlife already moni-
tors double-crested cormo-
rant populations on the coast
extensively. In addition to reg-
ular nonlethal hazing activi-
ties, when some monitoring
can occur, there are regu-
lar aerial surveys and estuary
surveys. On these excursions,
biologists focus on a variety
of bird species but also take
note of the double-crested
cormorants.
The state has not increased
any of its monitoring activi-
ties in response to the Corps’
lethal management plan on
East Sand Island. This is
mostly because the Depart-
ment of Fish and Wildlife’s
own monitoring efforts along
the coast and in the estuaries
are already “pretty robust,”
Lawonn said. “We feel that
we’ve got our bases covered.”
Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
Cormorants rest below the Astoria Bridge last year.
Nonlethal hazing
Oregon plans to begin
its nonlethal hazing activ-
ities in May, focusing on
the Nehalem, Nestucca and
Coquille river estuaries and
Tillamook and Alsea bays
before moving up to the
Lower Columbia River area.
The cormorants are native
to Oregon and are particu-
larly prevalent on the state’s
estuaries from April through
LISTINGS
M ONDAY E VENING
A
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(57)
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(61)
(63)
(64)
(65)
(162)
L
KATU
KOMO
KING
KOIN
KIRO
KGW
KRCW
KOPB
KPTV
KPDX
KCPQ
TBS
KZJO
ESPN
ESPN2
NICK
DISN
FAM
FMC
LIFE
ROOT
FS1
SPIKE
COM
HIST
A&E
TLC
DISC
NGEO
TNT
AMC
USA
FOOD
HGTV
FX
CNN
FNC
CNBC
BRAV
TCM
SYFY
RFD
(2)
(4)
(5)
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(162)
6 PM
October, according to a news
release from the Depart-
ment of Fish and Wildlife —
overlapping with when wild-
spawned and hatchery salmon
juveniles are migrating from
their origin streams to the
ocean.
The hazing activities by
the state are an effort to pro-
tect, in particular, spring
migrants that are considered
threatened under the Endan-
gered Species Act. Though
some small pyrotechnics
might be used, most often
the state’s hazing techniques
take the form of people driv-
ing around in boats, chasing
cormorants away from areas
where vulnerable — and valu-
able — juvenile salmon are
concentrated.
The Department of Fish
and Wildlife has coordinated
this cormorant hazing project
for the last eight years, and
such nonlethal hazing in one
form or another has occurred
at some Oregon estuaries
since the late 1980s.
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