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Ignorance of U.S. history called threat to security

Published April 11, 2003

     Widespread ignorance of American history among students and teachers at high schools and colleges is a major threat to the nation's security, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author David McCullough told a Senate panel yesterday.
     "We are raising a generation of people who are historically illiterate" and ignorant of the basic philosophical foundations of our constitutional free society, the past president of the Society of American Historians said.
     "We can't function in a society if we don't know who we are and where we came from," Mr. McCullough told a special hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. The panel is chaired by Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee Republican.
     Mr. McCullough said a group of high school students was asked if they could name the American Revolutionary War commanding general at Yorktown when British Gen. Charles Cornwallis surrendered. "More than half guessed Ulysses S. Grant. More than 6 percent said it was Douglas MacArthur. They were guessing," he said.
     "Why is it important if you don't know the facts about Yorktown? It means you have no idea it was the last battle of the Revolutionary War — the longest war in our history except the Vietnam War. Why is it important to know who George Washington is?" he said. "If it hadn't been for George Washington, we wouldn't have won the Revolutionary War. Without George Washington, we wouldn't have the Constitution that we have and we wouldn't have the presidency that we have."
     Mr. McCullough's most recent work is on Founding Father John Adams, which won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for biography.
     He said only three colleges in the United States require a course on the Constitution in order to graduate: the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the Naval Academy at Annapolis and the Air Force Academy.
     "We need to know the Constitution, and we don't. When you have students at our Ivy League colleges saying they thought Germany and Japan were our allies in World War II, you know we've got a very serious problem," Mr. McCullough testified.
     Mr. Alexander, who was education secretary under the first Bush administration, noted the reluctance of many teachers to promote the country's religious and patriotic heritage. He asked Mr. McCullough if students should be taught that America is an "exceptional" country.
     "Yes, we're an exceptional people," the historian responded. "The American story is exceptional. The American Revolution was the first revolution of a people breaking away from a colonial power and establishing a free country."
     The hearing was called to promote Mr. Alexander's proposed legislation to create federally funded two-week summer presidential academies for American history and civics teachers and four-week summer congressional academies for students of American history and civics.
     Mr. Alexander said students don't know these subjects because they are not being taught. "American history has been watered down and civics is too often dropped from the curriculum entirely," he said.
     He said the purpose of the proposed academies "would be to inspire better teaching and more learning of the key events, persons and ideas that shape the institutions and democratic heritage of the United States."
     Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, praised the proposal, saying that minimal state learning standards have dropped in recent years.
     Bruce Cole, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, called widespread ignorance of history "our American amnesia."
     Eugene W. Hickok, undersecretary of education, said only 10 percent of high school students scored at the "proficient" level on the history test administered in 2001 by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a national testing program that states are required to administer in schools that accept federal funding from grades three to eight.
     Much of the poor performance is because "too much of the history taught in our schools is compressed and diluted within broader social studies curricula," he said. "It is impossible for even the best-trained teacher to do justice to the full sweep of America's history in a curriculum that also covers such topics as geography, the environment, conflict resolution and world cultures."
     Diane Ravitch, research professor of education at New York University, said she is encouraged that the study of history "has been making a comeback."
     Ten years ago, only California, Massachusetts, Texas and Virginia had history standards to guide teachers, she said. "Today, after 10 years of popular support for academic standards, about half the states now have history standards."

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