As a former high school social studies teacher, I often commented to my peers that the high school social studies curriculum was incomplete. Since high school American History classes began with America’s Civil War, I asked “Where is the early history of our country taught?” The answer given me was that part of American history was taught in junior high school. Okay, I thought, but wouldn’t it be appropriate at least to give students primary source material in high school on the founding fathers’ writings, the Declaration of Independence, and how the Constitution was written? What, then, I thought would happen to the students if they went on to college without any knowledge of the foundational documents of our country?
The Right Brothers have a song “Shut Up and Teach” which gets to the heart of what’s happening on so many major colleges and universities today. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) recently released a comprehensive study on higher education's failure to teach students about America's early history and institutions.
The investigation was based on the premise that today's college students, who will be our nation's future leaders, must have a basic understanding of American history and founding principles if they are to be informed citizens. How can they evaluate America's relationship to the rest of the world unless they have a clear vision of America's unique identity and how we got where we are?
The results of ISI's multi-year study by eminent academics, who are experienced in the classroom, are depressing. ISI contracted with the University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy to undertake the largest statistically valid survey ever conducted in order to find out what colleges and universities are teaching their students about U.S. history and institutions. They surveyed 14,000 randomly selected college freshmen and seniors at 50 colleges and universities.
The students were tested with 60 multiple-choice questions to measure their knowledge in four subject areas: American history, American government, America and the world, and the market economy. Freshmen and seniors were given the same test, and here are the results: Seniors scored only 1.5 percent higher, on average, than freshmen, and at 16 schools, seniors scored lower than freshmen. I guess that means they learned little or nothing about America in their four years of college. If the multiple-choice test had been administered as an exam in a college course, seniors would have failed with an average score of 53.2 percent. That's called getting an F.
Seniors at 22 of the 50 colleges scored on average below 50 percent. More than half the seniors could not identify the correct century when the first American colony was established at Jamestown, or recognize Yorktown as the battle that ended the American Revolution. Fewer than half of college seniors recognized that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" is from the Declaration of Independence.
At many prestigious colleges, including Yale, Brown, and Georgetown, seniors know less than freshmen about American history. Many of the professors are encouraging their students to participate in political action, giving credit for such activities. By their own description, 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative, says the study being published this week. The imbalance is almost as striking in partisan terms, with 50 percent of the faculty members surveyed identifying themselves as Democrats and 11 percent as Republicans. The disparity is even more pronounced at the most elite schools, where, according to the study, 87 percent of faculty are liberal and 13 percent are conservative.
It seems to boil down to the obvious fact that students don't learn what colleges don't teach. If learning American history is the measure, the student can just as well attend a low-budget college. I would recommend watching (or buying the DVD) of "Indoctrinate U," a feature-length documentary film written by, directed by and starring Evan Coyne Maloney, on ideological conformism and political correctness in American higher education. Among other things, the film examines the use of institutional mechanisms such as speech codes, which it claims are used to punish students who express political views that are unpopular within academia. By the way, Maloney was raised by liberal-leaning parents…
The film covers anti-military protests at UC Santa Cruz and San Francisco State University, treatment of conservative students at Cal Poly and the University of Tennessee, racial and ethnic politics at the University of Michigan and Yale, teaching at Duke and Columbia, among other subjects. It also includes interviews with David French and Greg Lukianoff, (then respectively president and director of legal and public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), Glenn Reynolds, Daniel Pipes and others. Maloney spent two and a half years making the documentary by conducting interviews on various college campuses and with various thinkers.
No wonder, Obama-mania has swept the young. Our liberal, socialist-minded president was elected partly because of liberal organizations such as Acorn and the non-stop barrage of liberal vitriol oozing out of our major universities. The president is very clear about his social agenda: Take from the rich and distribute their surplus to the poor. In an ideal world, everyone should have enough of this world’s goods to survive at least frugally. Christianity, in its beginnings, tried a socialist agenda, as described in Acts:
Acts 4:32 The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. 33 With great power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great favor was accorded them all. 34 There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds of the sale, 35 and put them at the feet of the apostles, and they were distributed to each according to need.
Sounds more than socialist to me. The problem with the application of the early Christian model and today is that what the “community of believers” did then was voluntary, not compulsory. Religious orders that followed in the Church’s history copied that model and it is still around today, as members of religious orders voluntarily take a vow of poverty, BUT are not FORCED to do so.
I don’t think most Americans want forced redistribution of wealth. That’s not what this last election was about. Change, yes, but socialism, no. As the president’s approval rating continues to fall with his attempt to change America dramatically with his liberal agenda, I think the instinctive direction of Americans toward freedom will survive…despite the bias of college professors and the blueprint for the nation of the present Administration in Washington (and the tail-wagging Congress) to the contrary.
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