Rusty Saber: American history fades from classroom

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Both news articles appeared on the same day. It must have been a slow news day because both received fairly prominent coverage, even though neither was about politics, death, pestilence, wanton sex or unbridled violence.|ret||ret||tab|

One story was about a statement from the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers. The group stated that second graders should be using a mouse (not the fuzzy critter with big ears, the plastic one) and digital cameras in school. Fifth graders should be able to function in online discussions and create multimedia reports. With the exception of adding the caveat that these online discussions need some parental supervision, I'm with this group all the way. The Information Age is here; computer literacy is fast becoming as critical as reading and writing literacy. Doubtless these aims are well on the way to being met. Students will soon be computer literate when they leave elementary school, but when they graduate from college, will they know that the Constitution established the division of power in American government?|ret||ret||tab|

According to the other news story, more than a third of college seniors surveyed by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut were unable to name the Constitution as having created America's division of power between executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. |ret||ret||tab|

Shoot, only 23 percent could identify James Madison as the principle framer of the Constitution and even more identified Madison as having said, "Give me liberty or give me death." We can all take comfort in the fact that 99 percent could identify Beavis and Butthead. Somehow this doesn't comfort me. |ret||ret||tab|

Lest you assume the surveyed seniors are attending backwater institutions in Hicksville, 55 colleges were represented, including Harvard and Princeton. Based on a standard grading scale, 80 percent of college seniors surveyed received grades of D or F on the 34-question high school (not college) level test.|ret||ret||tab|

The study, sponsored by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, found that none of the 55 institutions surveyed required American history for graduation; 78 percent don't require students to take any history courses. One of the report's authors said, "They (students) are allowed to graduate as if they didn't know the past existed."|ret||ret||tab|

From firsthand experience I know that teaching history isn't easy. Back when I was a high school teacher (at about the same time young Tom Edison was fiddling around with the electric light bulb) I taught American history. Even then (I stretched the truth a bit, Edison had invented the light bulb by the time I began teaching), when there were far fewer attractive outside distractions, students couldn't understand why knowing about the past was of any value to them. I doubt that American history is any easier to teach today.|ret||ret||tab|

It shouldn't surprise anyone living in this throwaway society, where anything that happened before Ronald Reagan's presidency is ancient history, only 35 percent of college seniors knew that Harry S. Truman was president at the beginning of the Korean War. I wonder how many said: "Korean War? What was that?"|ret||ret||tab|

Apparently the lack of emphasis on American history begins in elementary schools, and goes on from there. James C. Rees, who oversees the George Washington estate in Mount Vernon, Va., said that Washington, our first president, has virtually disappeared from elementary textbooks. Future generations educated to believe that only the present matters will lose sight of where America came from. How will they know where the country should go when they don't where it has been? They may be computer experts, but they may also believe the Lincoln Memorial is a luxury car, and the Washington Monument is a tribute to the last Redskins team to win the Super Bowl. |ret||ret||tab|

They may not know for certain if it was Teddy Roosevelt or Jimmy Carter who charged up some place: San Juan Hill, or was it Iwo Jima? One of these guys may have raised the flag over wherever it was, but they won't know why.|ret||ret||tab|

|bold_on|(Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University and a Springfield public relations consultant.)[[In-content Ad]]