Forgetting Our Forefathers
How America's Top Universities Are Neglecting Our Past
Ashley Wall
November 2006
Abraham Lincoln once said, “That every man may receive at least, a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to… appreciate the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital importance.” It appears that America’s top universities appreciate our founding institutions and principals very little.
A recent study commissioned by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) entitled The Coming Crisis in Citizenship: Higher Education’s Failure to Teach American History essentially found just what the title implies—America’s top universities are failing to teach basic knowledge of American history, institutions and economy to their students. UNC happens to be part of the problem.
The University of Connecticut Department of Public Policy created a survey taken by 14,000 freshmen and seniors from 50 colleges and universities. These students were asked 60 multiple-choice questions about American history, government and the market economy to measure their competence in these areas.
Colleges are failing to increase knowledge of American history, according to the study. Seniors on average scored only 1.5 percent higher on the questions than did freshmen, and seniors would have failed the quiz with a score of 53.2 percent on a traditional grading scale. UNC seniors outscored freshman less than 2 percent. Many prestigious schools, such as Duke, Georgetown, Yale, Brown, MIT and Cornell, actually experienced negative learning, meaning the freshmen scored higher than the seniors.
More specifically, upperclassmen are clueless about America’s founding principals and documents. More than half surveyed did not know that the line “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” is from the Declaration of Independence. 53.4 percent could not identify the correct century when the first American colony was established. 72.8 percent did not know the source of the idea of separation of church and state. And about half of these seniors did not realize that the documents written in support of ratification of the Constitution were The Federalist Papers.
The study also found that a relationship exists between civic knowledge and civic involvement. Students who were more knowledgeable about civics and American history were more engaged in active citizenship and thus more likely to participate in voting, campaigning and volunteering. A higher percentage of passing grades on the quiz correlated with a higher number of citizenship activities. 90 percent of seniors at Colorado State (ranked 2nd in the study) had voted at least once. Schools where students had taken less than three relevant civics courses had lower levels of participation in politics.
It is then imperative that UNC and other schools across the country see the results of this study as an opportunity to improve the quality of American studies education in order to motivate more students to participate fully as active citizens.
“Yes, I would say the lack of knowledge in basic fields constitutes a crisis in citizenship,” said Dr. Roger Lotchin, a history professor at UNC. “For example, citizens cannot make informed judgments on legislative action without knowing what a filibuster is or a legislative hold. How can students understand American world policies without knowing what the balance of power is?”
UNC ranks 28th of the 50 schools in terms of American history and civics knowledge, behind North Carolina Central University and Appalachian State University, which ranked13th and 27th respectively, and in front of Duke and University of Virginia, ranked 46th and 42nd respectively.
Dr. Harry Watson, a history professor at UNC and director of the Center for the Study of the American South, was not surprised by the results of the study.
“Most U.S. students take some U.S. history in high school but not necessarily in college,” he said. “There's really no reason to think people's scores should go up much in college unless you focused on those who did take college US history courses. Even focusing on history majors is not good enough since many of them get credit for introductory US history through AP and then go on to concentrate on the history of somewhere else--modern Europe, for example.”
It is clear that UNC needs to increase its history and civics requirements in order to alleviate the problem of inefficient knowledge in these areas. An important finding in the study, perhaps the most important for the potential improvement of UNC’s American history education, was that schools that require more courses such as American history, political science, and economics did better in the study than schools that have fewer requirements in these subjects.
“You can't blame students for not knowing something if they were taught something else,” said Watson.
Let’s compare the humanities course requirements of Rhodes College, the liberal arts college that ranked first in the study, to those of UNC to see how we measure up.
While the new curriculum that began at UNC this year appears to be more humanities-friendly, in reality the only requirement that could add possible improvement of American history knowledge and foundations of democracy in general would be the new requirement of a course that engages directly in historical analysis. There is a “spatial and cultural connections” section of requirements that consists of 6 course focuses, such as “The North Atlantic World” and “Global Issues” that look promising, but these “connections” requirements are very general and require no additional hours because the courses are “eligible for multiple counting.”
Rhodes College requires three courses each in humanities and social sciences, and in addition all students must enroll in one of two programs, each consisting of three humanities-based courses. One program choice, called “The Search for Values in the Light of Western History and Religion,” combines religious studies, literature, philosophy, history and political science and uses foundational texts from religion and Greek and Roman civilization.
Rhodes seems to focus more on Western foundations than does UNC, and its approach is more interdisciplinary, achieving a broader view of Western culture through the insights of different subject areas. Of course, the possibility of ever having a program choice at UNC with the words “The Search for Values” in it is slim, considering the liberal sway of the university is in general antithetical to such a purpose.
“Speaking only for myself,” said Dr. Watson, “I would love to see more Carolina students taking more history courses of all kinds, plus [political science] and economics. But realistically, not everyone's interests run that way and it would be unfair to force the premeds, let's say, to neglect the courses they need just to suit my preferences.”
Dr. Lotchin, in contrast, recommends that “students should take two basic U.S. history courses as a requirement, two economics courses (taught by someone who can speak English), and two government courses (state and local).”
Aside from the weak humanities requirements in the curriculum itself, there is also a major problem with the types of courses students can take to satisfy those requirements.
Survey classes, such as broad-concentration American history classes like “American History to 1865” and “American History since 1865,” are obviously very capable of teaching basic knowledge of American history and civics as they cover a broad range of topics.
According to Dr. Lotchin, “Survey courses in US history teach better than others, plus courses like business history, diplomatic history, political history, urban history, constitutional history, and American Indian history.”
But UNC offers a wide array of specialized courses that allow students to bypass the survey classes, such as “Gender in Japanese History” or even subtopics within the general subject of American history that focus on race or religion. While the information in these courses is important and interesting, they do not constitute a full context of American history and civics necessary for students to become active citizens and to have an informed role in our democratic system.
“Courses that do not teach basic subject matter would be like those which are powered by some outside pressure group, especially courses that are about race, class, and gender or globalize or skin tone, imperialism, or preference diversity,” Lotchin said.
He acknowledges that there are “diplomatic history courses that overemphasize racism and imperialism, and such courses are worse than not having taught the subject at all.”
Dr. Watson, in contrast, gives universities and its students some credit.
“I also believe that the majority of American citizens would have failed many pencil-and-paper US history and politics tests at any time in past US history,” he said. In other words, I think we may exaggerate how much people really knew in ‘the good old days.’ In the days of the Founding Fathers, for example, a huge proportion of U.S. adults by modern standards, even among white men, were illiterate. How do you think they would have scored on an ISI-type test? So while civic education is very desirable, the fundamental right of self-government should rest on the experience and wisdom that comes with adulthood, not the number of facts in someone's head.”
But considering that the people who participated in the study are fully literate and have access to schools of higher education, is that really a good excuse? Shouldn’t we advance ourselves to our fullest potentials as American citizens?
In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free… it expects what never was and never will be.”