The NY Post reports: Citizens’ quiz gets upgrade.

What was Martin Luther King’s dream?

If you replied, “Equality for all Americans,” you successfully answered one of the questions being considered for a new U.S. citizenship test.

The government unveiled 144 revised questions yesterday – they will be winnowed down to 100 – as part of an effort to design a more meaningful test.

The questions – which received mixed reviews – will be tested on 5,000 immigrant volunteers in 10 cities starting early next year.

Applicants must get six of 10 questions right.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director Emilio Gonzalez said the purpose of the new test is to ensure that immigrants really understand “the very values that make this country what it is.”

“The goal is to get away from rote memorization of what could be construed as trivial questions to something more meaningful,” he said.

The current test is a multiple-choice exam that asks questions like “What are the colors of the U.S. flag?” “Where is the White House located?” and “How many branches are there in the U.S. government?”

The new exam asks questions that include:

* “What does ‘We the People’ mean in the Constitution?”

* “What major event happened on Sept. 11, 2001?”

The agency expects to spend $6.5 million on the new test, which officials hope to begin using in spring 2008.

It seems a very laudable idea to make prospective citizens think about what America is about, at its core.

The story doesn’t make it clear whether the new test is also multiple-choice, or whether the candidates are expected to come up with their own answers to these somewhat more open-ended questions. The answer provided for “What was Martin Luther King’s dream?” is “Equality for all Americans.” That’s probably a reasonably good short-hand for it, but a statement like that always begs the question of “equality of opportunity, or equality of results?” I’m not the best judge of what King’s ultimate dream really was, in that regard. And the folks taking the test are probably ill-prepared to read or write treatises on all the nuances.

I do think that King’s speech echoes through history, and deservedly so, because in it he dreamed that one day Americans “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” That’s a sentiment which everyone but loonies can agree upon, nobly expressed, and it caught the nation’s spirit and imagination. It spoke to the best of what America is and continually hopes to be.

…

I can’t resist flowing from that to this, also in the NY Post: Comic “thinks” he’s a Jew.

MICHAEL Richards was mistaken when he told his recently hired publicist, Howard Rubenstein, he was Jewish. Rubenstein, an expert in crisis management, said last week that Richards was Jewish after The Post reported the former “Seinfeld” star had spewed anti-Semitic insults at hecklers earlier this year, long before he screamed racial epithets at black audience members at an L.A. comedy club. But it turns out neither of Richards’ parents is Jewish, and he never converted. But Richards wasn’t lying, Rubenstein said: “He thinks he’s Jewish. There were two mentors in his life who raised him and had a big influence on his life, and they were Jewish. He said, ‘I agree with the religious beliefs of Judaism, and I’ve adopted Judaism as my religion.’ ” Rabbi Marvin Hier, who founded the Simon Wiesenthal Center in L.A., told the AP, “You can’t feel Jewish. It’s not a matter of feeling.” Rubenstein couldn’t say what faith Richards was raised in or what his real name was. But he said the actor is remorseful over both incidents: “He’s spending a lot of time with his psychiatrist.”

Indeed.

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