New Citizenship Test.

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail....hip-test-live-UK.html

And I wonder how many of today's school leavers would be able to answer these questions, I'll even go as far to include graduates from our anniversaries?

They will have to learn about William Shakespeare, Florence Nightingale, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the Duke of Wellington, Nelson, and the the Battle of Trafalgar, Alexander Fleming, Emmeline Pankhurst, artists Gainsborough, Turner, Constable.

Novelist names such as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, and poets including Byron, Blake and Browning, along with musicians such as Elgar and Holst including the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

And to Learn by heart the first verse of the national anthem, and how appropriate, learn passages of poetry including Browning’s Home Thoughts, from Abroad.

Are they trying to tell them something?

[rojash]

"I'll even go as far to include graduates from our anniversaries?"

eh?

[anotheoldgit]

Must have been trying to remember an anniversary, sorry.

[AliceTickband]

personally, anyone who wants to come and live here who comes up with a better national anthem, one that is about the UK, should be allowed in!

[jno]

so they are not to be taught about the human rights which Britons have fought for over the centuries - and in which England, with the Magna Carta, led the world.

Instead they are to learn about Byron, and presumably the incidence of incest among British poets.

[FredPuli43]

Graduates? Don't know about you, but, apart from two plays of Shakespeare, I never studied any of the works of the named writers and artists when I was at school, with the sole exception of Browning, whose poetry was a set 'book' at A Level (and 'Home Thoughts' was not one of the poems of interest, being thought too simple). As for learning poetry by heart,only one of the masters ever invited us to do that, and he was thought eccentric.

Knowing the names of people and who they were is hardly going to make much difference to being 'British'.

The way exams are nowadays, schoolchildren inevitably have great gaps in their knowledge. The exams are set to e.g. very narrow periods of history and bits of literature. The rest is glossed over or ignored.

The immigrants will be an odd lot, compared to the rest of us. The 'syllabus' sounds positively Victorian. All it needs is some knowledge of the Classics and it will be perfect.

[emmie]

i mentioned this to someone this morning, it's a load of rubbish.

[naomi24]

Ridiculous! As long as they support themselves, pay their taxes, and abide by the law, the rest is irrelevant.

[emmie]

absolutely correct ^^^^^^^^

[keyplus90]

They are just trying to make it impossible. What else?

[Gromit]

A well rounded knowledge of 30 years of British telly is all they need. The questions should be on who played Mrs Bridges in (the original) Upstairs Downstairs, who was the mouse in Mary, Mungo and Midge and who was the the fourth Dr. Who?

Useful stuff, not crap Byron knocked out when he was spaced out on Laudanum or a Limerick by Wordsworth.

[Charity]

I'd include humming the theme tune to the Archers too.

[emmie]

keyplus, you are joking right? make it impossible, how could that be, we have an open door, and someone simply threw away the key.

[Snafu03]

I wouldnt underestimate how knowledgable would-be immigrants wanting a UK passport are; they know alot more than you and me on what they are entitled to and how to fill out the forms.

[pdust]

after working closely with quite a few would be immigrants i would agree with snafu...... many of them were well clued up

[sandyRoe]

And not a mention of Gilbert & Sullivan. Surely no one can think themselves educated if they are ignorant of the Savoy Operas.