America disappearing down memory hole of PC educators

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 24, 2002 | by Don Feder

"Our ability to defend, intelligently and thoughtfully, what we as a nation hold clear depends on our knowledge and understanding of what we hold dear," says historian Diane Ravitch. A reasonable proposition. But unfortunately young Americans are oblivious to their heritage. Ignorance of our past has been carefully cultivated by the educational establishment and the result is a cut-flower generation, severed from its roots.

The recently released survey of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)--often referred to as the nation's report card--shows nearly 60 percent of high-school seniors lack even a basic knowledge of U.S. history. Only 41 percent of 12th-graders know the Monroe Doctrine was intended to keep Europe out of the Americas. A bare 29 percent connect the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution with the Vietnam War. And the NAEP results are only the latest indication that America's schools aren't teaching America's history.

In a 1999 survey of seniors at 55 of the best U.S. colleges and universities, only 23 percent correctly identified James Madison as the principal framer of the Constitution. Almost 80 percent earned grades of "D" or "F" on a high-school level American-history test.

On July 4, 1999, an enterprising reporter for the San Francisco Examiner asked teens at local malls about their understanding of the significance of Independence Day. One maintained the holiday was related to Pearl Harbor. A 17-year-old thoughtfully explained: "They put some flag up. It's like the freedom. Some war was fought and we won, so we got our freedom." Somewhere in the great hereafter, the soldiers of the Continental Army who froze to death in the snows of Valley Forge and the GIs who died in the steaming jungles of Bataan must be weeping.

This epidemic of ignorance is due in part to a crowding-out effect. Schools are so busy telling everyone else's story that there's no time for our own. At its 2001 convention, the National Education Association passed resolutions supporting multicultural education and global education. Absent was any suggestion that students should receive an American education.

When they absolutely must teach something about the United States, educrats prefer niche history--the experiences of African-, Asian- and Hispanic-Americans. The idea of E pluribus unum (Out of many, one) is anathema to them. Teaching American history--our common story--as opposed to group-identity history is rejected as Eurocentric and jingoistic.

This mind-set was displayed at a forum of the National Council for Social Studies, as reported in the Weekly Standard of May 6. The council represents 26,000 teachers of history, social studies and related subjects. To a teacher who said that in the wake of Sept. 11 her students wanted to know more about their nation's past, a panelist responded: "We need to de-exceptionalize the United States. We're just another country and another group of people."

Truly, as Yogi Berra would say, only in America. Only here do our elites cringe at the thought of teaching students that there's something special and unique about their homeland. They are traitors of the heart and John Walker Lindhs of the spirit.

It's not even that they think we're no better than other people, but that we're considerably worse than most. Theirs is a highly truncated version of the American saga consisting of slavery, the dispossession of the Indians and the Vietnam War through the eyes of Jane Fonda. The struggle of the settlers to build a new civilization, the genius of the Founding Fathers reflected in the Constitution, the greatness of Abraham Lincoln, the contributions to humanity of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, and the heroic sacrifices of the World War II generation are nothing to them.

Ronald Reagan warned, "If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are." We'll be like amnesia victims wandering aimlessly about, wondering what it all means. Reagan charged "the eradication of American memory" inevitably will lead to" an erosion of the American spirit."

"United We Stand," proclaims the bumper sticker that still festoons cars. But how long will we stand so, when our young don't know who we are, how we got here or what we represent?

DON FEDER WRITES EDITORIALS FOR THE BOSTON HERALD AND IS A SYNDICATED COLUMNIST