大多數美國人若參加公民考試將無法通過大綱
Just one in three Americans can pass a multiple choice exam featuring questions taken from the U.S. citizenship Test, according to a recent survey. And the bar isn't particularly high. Test takers must get a score of at least 60 percent - the equivAlent of a "D" grade - to pass the exam.
The citizenship test is a part of the U.S. naturalization process for people not born in the United States. People who are legal permanent residents - known as "Green Card" holders - can normally apply for citizenship after living in the United States for a 5-year period.
公民身份考試是美國入籍程序的一部分，適用於非美國出生的人。在美國的合法永久居民，也就是"綠卡"持有人，通常可以在美國居住5年後申請公民身份。Almost three-fourths of the Americans who took the test couldn't pick out the 13 original colonies in the multiple choice exam, 57 percent couldn't say how many justices serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, and more than half - 60 percent - didn't know which countries the United States fought during World War II.
參加考試的美國人中有近四分之三的人無法在多項選擇考題中選出美國最初的13個殖民州，57％的人不能說有美國最高法院有多少法官，有超過一半的 60％ 的人不知道美國在第二次世界大戰期間與哪些國家作戰。
"It really becomes troublesome," says Patrick Riccards of the non-profit Woodrow Wilson Foundation. "It points to a real need to begin to look at how we are teaching and learning history in this country, and what we can do to make history more relevant, more interesting, more engaging for today's students so that we can reverse this trend."
非營利組織伍德羅威爾遜基金會的裏卡德說："這真的很讓人傷腦筋。"他說，"這顯示出真正需要開始研究我們如何在美國教授和學習歷史，以及我們如何才能讓歷史對現在的學生來說更有意義、更有趣、更有吸引力，來扭轉這種趨勢。"Ironically, 40 percent of people who took the test cited history as their favorite subject while they were in school.
令人啼笑皆非的是，40％參加考試的人表示歷史是他們在學校時最喜歡的科目。Senior citizens achieved the highest scores, with 74 percent of people over 65 answering at least six out of 10 questions correctly. Only 19 percent of people under the age of 45 managed to pass the exam.
參加考試的老年人得分最高，65歲以上的人中有74％正確地回答了10個問題中至少6個問題。而45歲以下的人中只有19％的能通過考試。
