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From the Washington Post {Reprintef in full to bypass registration} 'Greatest Generation' Struggled With History, Too Jay Mathews Staff Writer Mar 9 2004 When the U.S. Department of Education reported that in 2001 nearly six out of 10 high school seniors lacked even a basic knowledge of the nation's history, Bruce Cole was indignant and concerned. "A nation that does not know why it exists, or what it stands for, cannot be expected to long endure," said Cole, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is a sentiment repeated often, part of a torrent of distress over the state of American history education. The 2001 report said most 12th-graders did not know that the Gulf of Tonkin resolution led to the war in Vietnam. Most eighth-graders did not know why the First Continental Congress met. Yet, according to recent papers by two researchers, it turns out Americans have been deeply ignorant of their history for a very long time, while still creating the strongest, if not the brightest, country in the world. A test administered in 1915 and 1916 to hundreds of high school and college students who were about to face World War I found that they did not know what happened in 1776 and confused Thomas Jefferson with Jefferson Davis. A 1943 test showed that only a quarter of college students could name two contributions made by either Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln, leading historian Allan Nevins to fret that such a historically illiterate bunch might be a liability on the battlefields of Europe in World War II. And still, Americans won both wars, and many of the 1943 students who said the United States purchased Alaska from the Dutch and Hawaii from Norway were later lionized in books, movies and television as "the Greatest Generation." "If anything," writes Sam Wineburg, a Stanford University education professor in a new Journal of American History article, "test results across the last century point to a peculiar American neurosis: each generation's obsession with testing its young only to discover -- and rediscover -- their 'shameful' ignorance. The consistency of results across time casts doubt on a presumed golden age of fact retention. "Appeals to it," the article continues, "are more the stuff of national lore and wistful nostalgia for a time that never was than a claim that can be anchored in the documentary record." Richard J. Paxton, an assistant professor in the Educational Foundations Department of the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and a former Wineburg student, makes a similar point in the December issue of the Phi Delta Kappan. Frequent articles about historically challenged U.S. students, plus public displays of ignorance on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," "propagate the impression that today's students are educational midgets standing on the shoulders of giants," Paxton wrote. ". . . More important, they spread the false notion that the biggest problem facing history students today involves the retention of decontextualized historical facts." The earliest evidence of historical cluelessness that either scholar could find was a study by J. Carleton Bell and David F. McCollum in the May 1917 issue of the Journal of Educational Psychology. Bell and McCollum tested 1,500 students in Texas and reported these percentages of correct answers on history questions: elementary school, 16 percent; high school, 33 percent; teachers college, 42 percent; and university, 49 percent. It was particularly troubling that many of these sons and daughters of Texas could not state the significance of the year 1846, the beginning of the Mexican-American War, and had Sam Houston marching triumphantly into Mexico City rather than beating Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna at San Jacinto 10 years before. The next key survey cited in both the Wineburg and Paxton studies appeared in the New York Times on April 4, 1943, under the headline "Ignorance of U.S. History Shown by College Freshmen." Only 6 percent of the 7,000 freshmen could name the 13 original colonies. Only 13 percent identified James Madison as president during the War of 1812, and only 15 percent knew that William McKinley was president during the Spanish-American War. Some commentators at the time blamed the results on then-controversial public school efforts to wrap history, geography, economics and civics into something called social studies. A bicentennial survey in 1976, supervised by Harvard University historian Bernard Bailyn and published in the New York Times, tested nearly 2,000 freshmen at 194 colleges. On average, the respondents got only 21 of 42 multiple-choice questions right, although Bailyn's standards appeared to be very high. Wineburg said the professor called it "absolutely shocking" that "more students believed that the Puritans guaranteed religious freedom (36 percent) than understood religious tolerance as the result of rival denominations seeking to cancel out each others' advantage (34 percent)." Many surveys and tests in the generation since have produced similar results, with high school students getting about half of the questions right. Neither Wineburg nor Paxton says so, but Virginia recently reduced the passing score on its American history test to about 50 percent, and some other states have similar benchmarks. The National Assessment of Educational Progress history tests in 1987, 1994 and 2001 came out about the same. Slightly less than half of high school students scored at what the test makers considered a basic knowledge of U.S. history in 2001. Younger students showed modest gains, with 67 percent of fourth-graders and 64 percent of eighth-graders scoring at at least the basic level. When asked about the Wineburg and Paxton reports, Cole, the National Endowment for the Humanities chairman, said: "I am surprised that any professor would suggest that it doesn't matter whether students know American history." Wineburg and Paxton said their goal is not to place less priority on historical knowledge, but rather to advocate changes in the way it is taught. Wineburg said the history standards that teachers must cover are often so detailed that the main points of the American story are lost, and few schools teach the subject well in any case. Teachers skip quickly from topic to topic, he wrote, while "the mind demands pattern and form, and both are built up slowly and require repeated passes, with each pass going deeper and probing further." Paxton said he is also bothered by scholarly ignorance of the century-old American performance on such tests. "Historians who shout like censorious Chicken Littles that our nation is in jeopardy but do not bother to inspect the historical record are terribly poor role models," he wrote. © 2004 The Washington Post Company

ONE SOLITARY LIFE ( Author Unknown ) He was born in an obscure village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. He then became an itinerant preacher. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a house. He never went to college. He had no credentials but Himself. He was only thirty-three when the public turned against Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He was deserted by his friends. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While He was dying, His executioners gambled for His clothing, the only property He had on earth. He was laid in a borrowed grave. Twenty Centuries have come and gone, and today He is still the central figure of the human race. All the Armies that ever marched, all the Navies that ever sailed, all the Parliaments that ever sat, and all the Kings that ever reigned have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that ONE SOLITARY LIFE. On a secular plane, I would choose Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who, for good or for ill, launched the Enlightenment, whose paradigm governs our world view to this day.

I think the problem with discussing a candidate's war experience involves one view of war. A pacifist's view of war is that not one person should die for ideology. The turbulence of the Sixties, and the revulsion against war in general caused by the conflict over the war in viet Nam, have led to two definitions of "just war". See here, and here. Depending on how one perceives war: 1) Kerry knows war, and knowing it, he was "correctly" repulsed by it. [Note: the theory here is that, since being in Viet Nam was wrong to begin with, the sooner you expressed that revulsion, the more perceptive, and therefore, "right", you were. This theory falls apart if one does not believe millions of Vienamese people living under communist oppresion as a good idea.] 2) Bush's involvement in the military was illegitimate, because he used his father's influence to get him well-placed. This presupposes that no one in America would have used different means to place themselves where they felt either safest, more involved, braver, or whatever, e.g., getting married, going to college, getting a "Defense deferment" job. 3) Has anybody asked if Kerry volunteered to go to Viet Nam? Why did he reduce his chances of seeing combat by joining the Navy? (A common sixties 'trick') Why did he use the "three wounds and you're home" maneuver? Etc, etc, ad nauseam Put simply: If Kerry can go to war, and then come back and say the war was wrong, then he is no different from thousands of other veterans of many wars. If George W. Bush can use some "pull" to get a preferred assignment in wartime, then he is no different from thousands of other veterans of many wars. It's time to look elsewhere, besides Viet Nam, for what goes into making a Presidential candidate, just as it is time to look elsewhere, besides Viet Nam, to determine the whys and wherefores of foreign policy and military involvement.

One must be careful in speculating about the future, not to bring the present with us. Michael Crichton recently commented that a 19th Century demographer might have foreseen that by the 21st century there would be 6 billion people on earth, but he would have wondered where they would find space for their horses. In the four novel series, Cities in Flight, by James Blish [published from 1955 to 1962], the cities of earth use "spindizzy" technology to head for the stars, guided by supercomputers called the City Fathers. Yet, nowhere in the story is there mentioned a personal computer, or even a hand held calculator! If we try to preserve what is best about our current teaching methods, there might be a "cultural dissonance" with the technology of even a few decades from now. A half a dozen to a dozen students sitting on the ground around a Socrates or a Maimonides might work if the teacher is in front of a webcam, with his cyberstudents anywhere from Birmingham to Bahrain, but will our minds be prepared for that type of learning experience? And what type of person will that experience produce?

I probably graduated from college more recently than most, if not all, of you. I can share with you my experience with three types of teachers: 1) Totally hands on - all handouts, films, and videosno text, role playing, interactive and proactive 2) Guided Independent study - 1 4 hour introduction; 1 required paper, then pick 4 out of 5 topics; see the teacher if you need to. 2a) Guided Independent Study - 1 4 hour introduction; choose 9 out of 10 topics, see the teacher when you need to. 3) Classroom Lecturer - "I talk, you listen"; quizzes and tests based primarily on material read out of class; Final Exam: at home, open book short essays, again, based on material not covered in class. #1 could never be replaced by non-human technology #2 and 2a, as pointed out above, would never work with non - motivated students (ages 6 -16) #3 is the way College was before the "Revolution" of the Sixties - I had both experiences. I'll take #1, over #2 or #3, anyday. My communications teacher used to tell us, "You listen to me, and pay attention to me, because I sit in the front. You have been trained by 12 years in school, and years of Television and movies, that information comes from in front of you." That wouldn't happen without a classroom.

I am still not clear on how it is that as historians you are unable to determine, and, therefore, impart truth. I, too, think it is important to teach the methodology of history. It will show the student how bias, myths, or social pressures influence not only the interpretation pfevents, but the priority of events to be covered. For example, when I was in grade school, two Hungarian students came to our school - refugees from the stillborn revolution. In that same year we learned that Indochina was going to be called Cambodia, Laos, and Viet Nam. Contrast that with, say, 1972, when Viet Nam was being discussed from Kindergarten to University; but there were undoubredly Teachers who couldn't identify Hungary on a map. Nonetheless, Hungary is what it is, and what it was; so, too, Viet Nam. Do either of you have an argument with that?

I'm going to go out on a limb, and make a reply based on three conditions: 1) I only browsed through Mr. Simkin's initial post, and the subsequent replies; 2) I will not go run all over the Internet looking for links; 3) I will try to bring the "war service issue" "into the present." First, the National Guard was not, nor is it, a 'rich man's refuge.' A little checking into the Kent State incident will reveal that the Guardsmen were storeowners, and local employees, whose morale suffered because of the inclement weather the fact that they couldn't go home, even though they liuved right nearby. This most likely contributed to the terrible misjudgement that lead to the shooting on May 4, 1970. (According to James Michener's account). My personal opinion is that anybody who goes down to the Recruiting Station, and raises their right hand ia volunteering to serve their country. Period. the people killed on the U.S.S. Cole were all noncombatants. On the other hand, anyone who subverts their fellow citizens not participate in a war in which their country is involved, while not a traitor, is no hero. Second, all historians should know that the days of noblemen leading their loyal serfs into battle passed with the Napoleonic Wars. "Old men" have been sending "young men" into wars, at least since the American Civil War, and certainly World War I. Third, does a Presidential candidate's war record matter? What about John Edwards'? Has anyone even asked? It certainly doesn't matter to me. What does matter to me is the public record of a candidate towards the Military in particular, and National Defense, in general. Here, Mr. Kerry fails miserably. His anti-military voting record might get him re-elected in the People's Republic of Massachusetts, but I don't think it will set well in "fly-over country." Fourth, on a personal note: I went to Viet Nam as a noncombatant, because I had specifically requested that status when I joined the Army. I went to Viet Nam with a physical disablity that qualified me for compensation after discharge, but due to some perverse military logic, didn't qualify me for discharge. When the rockets were launched, no one told me to stay out of harm's way. But I loved the Vietnamese people, and they were betrayed by our internal politics, in much the same way as they were left to suffer under the Viet Minh, by France's Fifth Republic. I have no respect for a man who is duplicitous with regard to his own war service.

It is this kind of thinking that frustrates education, rather than cultivating it. If we don't "know" anything, then it is, ipso facto, impossible to learn anything. Education is not epistemology; we are not discussing whether we know, but rather, what we know. You are engaging in sophistry.

I upset many a Professor, and many a class, with my views on this in the earlt '90's, when "agent of change" was au courant. My view, considered heresy by most, was that we, as prospective teachers, were not "agents pf change"; rather we were keepers of the sociocultural Flame. It is our responsibility to take society's body of knowledge, and pass it on to the next generation. There are two important reasons why this must be so. First, societies, like individuals, must value themselves - their knowledge, their traditions and their values. To study one's own society as if it "just like all the rest," or worse, "not as good as others," is to propagate a sort of cultural "learned helplessness," a notion that there isn't much purpose in going on, and improving one's own land. Second, adolescents (13 - 20 years of age) are notoriously rebellious and thoroughly convinced that they have fresh new approaches to situations and events that they are encountering for the first time. It would be inaccurate, if not harmful, to teach them that their powers of analysis, unleavened by experience, are the equal of adults. I think we are still paying the price for that misunderstanding with regard to the PostWar 'babyboomers' even now. We should not confuse "critical thinking" with revisionism, or worse, cynicism or pessimism. As an American, nothing has disturbed me more since the early '70's than to hear educated people amend the statement "America is a great country", by inserting "with all its faults" after the name "America."

If I might add my own $.02: Of course we don't live in an Athenian style democracy, nor do we get up every day and vote on all the policy issues that face us. In America, we have a representative democracy; a republican form of government. As we are seeing in Iraq, what may be the majority rule could turn out to be an "Iran-style" Islamic fundamentalist government, certainly the last type of government we would have hoped or planned for. As the Christian Science Monitor [4/14/2003] points out: "With American assistance, a democracy will replace a dictatorship. But then, as a result, Iraq's long tradition of the minority Sunni Muslims ruling over the majority Shiites will likely come to an end." When a nation commits its troops to a "battle for democracy", it must be prepared for the people's will.

My name is Frank DiSalle. I am not a classroom teacher, but I apply educational principles, and computer programming, to help empower people diagnosed with a mental illness. By giving them power in a virtual universe, it is my hope that they carry with them this feeling into the real world. I graduated from Iona College in 1994, at the age of 46, after 15 years with the federal government, and 4 years in the US Army.