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BostonRTWT.
'We're raising young people who are, by and large, historically illiterate," David McCullough tells me on a recent afternoon in a quiet meeting room at the Boston Public Library. Having lectured at more than 100 colleges and universities over the past 25 years, he says, "I know how much these young people—even at the most esteemed institutions of higher learning—don't know." Slowly, he shakes his head in dismay. "It's shocking."
He's right. This week, the Department of Education released the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which found that only 12% of high-school seniors have a firm grasp of our nation's history. And consider: Just 2% of those students understand the significance of Brown v. Board of Education.
Mr. McCullough began worrying about the history gap some 20 years ago, when a college sophomore approached him after an appearance at "a very good university in the Midwest." She thanked him for coming and admitted, "Until I heard your talk this morning, I never realized the original 13 colonies were all on the East Coast." Remembering the incident, Mr. McCullough's snow-white eyebrows curl in pain. "I thought, 'What have we been doing so wrong that this obviously bright young woman could get this far and not know that?'"
Answer: We've been teaching history poorly. And Mr. McCullough wants us to amend our ways ...
1 comments:
Too often, history is viewed as a series of events... at best a road map that is sectioned off in a grid that represents events through the passage of time.
But history is really far more complex than that. Singular events of importance affect the history of politics, science, social structure, international relationships, technology, medicine, an on and on. Using the road map analogy, history is a three dimensional road map moving through time... countless layers interconnected, disjointed, dead-ending, spring from seemingly nothing.
Finding the "history of [fill in the blank]" is often relegated to simply one or two layers when the real history is so dynamic and complicated that our written history is analogous to describing the universe as "big."
What drove the American revolution? The Tea Party? What drove that? And that before that? And why were key players involved? And what were the dynamics that allowed so few to have so much influence over the lives of so many? And how is that relevant to our present situation? And why is there so much disagreement?
None of know much about history. It would take another Manhattan Project to make history comprehensible to most.
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