Making sense of the census - 6 Minute English

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Hello. This is 6 Minute English

from BBC Learning English. I’m Neil.

And I’m Sam.

In recent years, many people have

wanted to find out more about where

they come from. Millions have tried

to trace their family history and

discover how their ancestors

lived hundreds of years ago.

The internet has made it much

easier to find historical

documents and records about

your family history - and one

of the most useful documents

for doing this is the census.

A census is an official count of

all the people living in a country.

It collects information about a

country’s population and is usually

carried out by the government.

In Britain, a census has been

carried out every ten years since 1801.

In 2002, when census records from a

hundred years before became available

online, so many people rushed to

their computers to access them

that the website crashed!

But before we find out more about

the census and its related vocabulary

it’s time for a quiz question, Sam.

Someone who knows a lot about his

family history is British actor,

Danny Dyer. When BBC television

programme Who Do You Think You Are?

researched his family history they

discovered that the actor was

related to someone very

famous – but who was it?

A) King Edward III,

B) William Shakespeare, or

C) Winston Churchill

Well, I know Danny Dyer usually

plays tough-guy characters so

maybe it’s C), war hero

Winston Churchill.

OK, Sam, we’ll find out later

if that’s correct. Now, although

the first British census took

place in 1801, other censuses

have a much longer history. In fact,

the bible story of Mary and Joseph

travelling to Bethlehem is

linked to a Roman census.

So, what was the original reason

for counting people and what did

governments hope to achieve by

doing so? Here’s Dr Kathrin Levitan,

author of a book on the cultural

history of the census, speaking to

BBC World Service programme,

The Forum:

I think there were probably two

most common reasons. One was in order

to figure out who could fight in wars,

so basically military conscription

and in order to find out who could

fight in wars ancient governments like

the Roman Empire had to find out

how many men of a certain age

there were. And I would say that

the other thing that censuses were

most commonly used for was

for purposes of taxation.

According to Kathrin Levitan,

ancient censuses were used to

figure out – or understand, how

many men were available

to fight wars.

The Roman Empire needed a

strong army, and this depended

on conscription – forcing

people to become soldiers

and join the army.

The other main reason for

taking a census was taxation –

the system of taxing people a

certain amount of money to be

paid to the government

for public services.

Ancient and early modern

censuses were large and

difficult-to-organise projects.

They often involved government

officials going from house

to house, asking questions

about the people who lived there.

But over time governments’ desire

to know about, and control, its

citizens gave rise to new

technologies for counting people.

Here’s statistician and economist

Andrew Whitby explaining how this

happened in the US to BBC World

Service programme, The Forum:

The 1890 census of the United States

was the first in which some kind of

electro-mechanical process was used

to count people… so instead of just

armies of clerks reading off

census schedules and tabulating

these things by hand, for the first

time an individual census record

would be punched onto a card… so

that there were holes in this card

representing different

characteristics of the person and

then those cards could

be fed through a machine.

Old-fashioned censuses were

managed by clerks – office workers

whose job involved keeping records.

Thousands of clerks would record

the information gathered in the

census and tabulate it, in other

words, show the information in

the form of a table with

rows and columns.

The US census of 1890 was the

first to use machines, and many

censuses today are electronically

updated to record new trends

and shifts in populations

as they happen.

In fact, so much personal

information is now freely

available through social media

and the internet that some

people have questioned the

need for having a

census at all.

Yes, it isn’t hard to find out

about someone famous,

like a TV star.

Someone like Danny Dyer, you mean?

Right. In my quiz question I

asked Sam which historical

figure TV actor, Danny Dyer,

was related to.

And I said it was C) Winston

Churchill. Was I right?

It was a good guess, Sam, but

the actual answer was A) King

Edward III. And no-one was

more surprised that he was

related to royalty than the

EastEnders actor himself!

OK, Neil, let’s recap the

vocabulary from this programme

about the census - the official

counting of a nation’s population.

To figure something out

means to understand it.

The Romans used conscription

to force men to join

the army by law.

Taxation is the government’s

system of taxing people to

pay for public services.

A clerk is an office worker

whose job involves keeping records.

And tabulate means show information

in the form of a table

with rows and columns.

That’s all for our six-minute

look at the census, but if we’ve

whetted your appetite for more

why not check out the whole

episode – it’s available now on

the website of BBC World

Service programme, The Forum.

Bye for now!

Bye bye.