George Santayana's famous quote referred to "those who do not LEARN from history," not those who do not KNOW historical facts (which may not be the same thing), but a recent survey suggests that many American children fall into the latter category. From a
StarTribune report:
U.S. students are less proficient in their nation's history than in any other subject, according to results of a nationwide test released Tuesday, with most fourth-graders unable to say why Abraham Lincoln was an important figure and few high school seniors able to identify the issue at the heart of the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling...
Diane Ravitch, an education historian who was invited by the National Assessment's governing board to review the results, said she was particularly disturbed that only 2 percent of 12th-graders correctly answered the question concerning Brown v. Board of Education, which she called "very likely the most important decision" of the U.S. Supreme Court in the past seven decades.
Students were given an excerpt -- including the passage "We conclude that in the field of public education, separate but equal has no place, separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" -- and were asked what social problem the 1954 ruling was supposed to correct...
The tests were given last spring to a representative sample of 7,000 fourth-graders, 11,800 eighth-graders and 12,400 12th-graders nationwide.
History is one of eight subjects -- the others are math, reading, science, writing, civics, geography and economics -- covered by the assessment program, which is also known as the Nation's Report Card...
And this from the
WSJ coverage:
The overall lackluster performance is certain to revive the debate about whether history and other subjects, such as science and art, are being pushed out of the curriculum because of the focus on math and reading demanded under the No Child Left Behind federal education law. The federal law mandates that students be tested in math and reading...
A few sample questions are available at each link.
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