(HOST) Recent reports indicate – yet again – that American teenagers are ignorant of basic facts of history and literature. But commentator Vic Henningsen is a teacher and historian who doesn’t believe we really need to fear for the future of the republic.
(HENNINGSEN) It’s pretty scary. In a survey of over 7000 students, one quarter didn’t know that Lincoln was president during the Civil War. Another twenty-five percent said it was George Washington. The rest named Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, or Warren Harding. Many placed Portland, Oregon, on Lake Erie and listed Nevada as one of the original thirteen states. Some had the first American railroads appearing in 1941 – others put the date at 1590. Eighty-four percent couldn’t cite two contributions made by Thomas Jefferson, though some identified him as the author of the Monroe Doctrine and the man who discovered electricity.
Tired of hearing more evidence of the stunning ignorance of today’s youth? Well, it may surprise you to learn that The New York Times conducted this survey of American college freshmen in 1943.
It seems that members of the so-called "Greatest Generation" didn’t know much about history when they were teenagers either.
History, they say, is wasted on the young. Teachers lay the kindling, but the fires we light usually smolder, blazing up only when the experience of living life impels adults to reclaim the past and study it as a way of making sense of what’s happening to them and why. The "Greatest Generation" learned its history as adults, reading books by people like Bruce Catton and Barbara Tuchman. Today’s adults are, if anything, even more entranced by the past, if the sales of books by David McCullough, Stephen Ambrose, or Joseph Ellis are any indication. The popularity of the History Channel, the films of Ken Burns, and Vermont’s annual History Expo – all testify to the power of the past to capture adult attention.
I don’t mean to downplay worries about the quality of today’s high school education. Can schools and teachers do a better job of getting kids interested in history? Of course. Does the modern mania for basic skills testing threaten such improvement? You bet.
But are we in danger of creating a generation of historical know-nothings? I don’t believe so. The problem with surveys like the one the Times conducted is that they confuse process with result. High school seniors and college freshmen are many things, but they’re not fully formed adults. They don’t stop learning when they get that diploma. I’ve been teaching long enough to know that schools should be judged on what their graduates are like at thirty; long enough to have seen my own students mature into thoughtful citizens I’m proud to have as neighbors and friends.
So when pundits despair about how little today’s students know, I try not to get too upset. If the past is any guide, we teachers have sown the seeds – and the harvest will come. And when people point to a decline in historical literacy, I think of that 1943 survey. As Oscar Wilde said: "Things were never as good as they used to be."