America’s Historical Illiteracy
To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to remain a child always.
– Cicero
In 2008 Common Core published a study by Frederick M. Hess which examined the knowledge of history and literature possessed by 17 year-old high school students in the United States. The results were depressing. Less than half of the 1,200 students questioned were able to identify the Renaissance or even the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy. Only 50% could explain why the Federalist Papers were written and fewer than half could correctly identify the half century in which the Civil War was fought. More than one fourth of these students believed that Christopher Columbus sailed for the New World sometime after 1750.
As Mr. Hess notes, these questions are “basic,” by which he really means “simple.” Yet, these 17-year olds recorded an aggregate grade of 73 on the history questions and an aggregate grade of 57 on the literature questions for a cumulative overall grade of 67 percent — a grade of D.
“Seventeen-year olds with at least one college-educated parent (and by this they mean a parent who, at least, has received an associate’s degree) scored at least one full letter grade, and sometimes almost two, above those without a college-educated parent on over 40 percent of the history questions,” That information is testimony to the many historical illiterates who are raising America’s children these days. But was it ever any different?
I was one of those 17-year-old historical illiterates back in 1965. But, after four years of military service and
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