Last week, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni released its latest report: “No U.S. History? How College History Departments Leave the United States out of the Major.” In the report, ACTA found that less than one-third of the undergraduate history majors at the top colleges and universities in the country require even a single U.S. history course.
ACTA’s report examined the history major programs at the 25 liberal arts colleges, 25 national universities, and 25 public institutions that rank highest in U.S. News and World Report. Of these programs, only 23 require a course in U.S. history of undergraduate history majors. Institutions such as Harvard University, Stanford University, Georgetown University, Williams College, the University of Michigan, and the Ohio State University do not require a course in U.S. history of their history majors.
Instead, schools like these compile an eclectic range of niche courses from which undergraduates choose in order to fulfill their major requirements. When history majors can take courses like “Modern Addiction: Cigarette Smoking in the 20th Century” at Swarthmore College or “Witchcraft and Possession” at the University of Pennsylvania instead of comprehensive U.S. history, it should surprise no one that America’s memory is deteriorating.
The consequences are obvious. ACTA includes in its report the results of three GfK surveys from 2012 to 2015 on college graduates’ knowledge of U.S. history. In these multiple-choice surveys, less than 20 percent could identify the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation. One-third of them did not know that Franklin Roosevelt introduced the New Deal. Nearly half did not know the correct term lengths of members of Congress. With results such as these, it becomes painfully evident that our most prestigious educational institutions are failing to prepare a knowledgeable public, a failure that James Madison warned would be “a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.”
Critics of the report may say that students receive ample preparation of American historical knowledge in high school. But the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as “the nation’s report card” for civics and U.S. history, explodes that argument. Data from the report concluded that only 24 percent of 12th graders scored at a “proficient” civic knowledge. More serious is the fact that 36 percent of high school seniors did not even score at a “basic” level. It seems truth has had enough outing since the National Center for Education Statistics ceased administering the NAEP to high-school seniors after 2010 due to insufficient funding.
The institutions that performed the best overall were not Ivy League schools or elite liberal arts colleges but were among America’s public universities. Why? Certain state legislatures, among them Texas, Nevada, Georgia, and others, have taken it upon themselves to enact legislation calling on state institutions to require a course in U.S. history of all undergraduates, not just history majors. It is disheartening that any college or university would need such direction from a state legislature instead of taking up the responsibility itself of sufficiently educating the country’s future leaders.
When a college thinks of public relations laurels, it ought to prioritize responsible citizenship through the proper study of our nation’s historical blunders and brilliance. College graduates should be able to discuss how it came to be that the Founders could devise a communal democratic ideal despite their individual iniquities.
Our Founders took on a debt of liberty at the signing of Declaration of Independence, but it took 87 years and a civil war to begin paying on that debt. This is a story that our higher educational institutions have a duty to tell and engrain in the American consciousness. Failing to do so does not simply mean that students graduate ignorant of names and dates. Rather, it ends with the realization that our colleges and universities are cultivating the dramatic fools in the tragic farce Madison warned against. If colleges reassume their duty, then students will be empowered to claim their democratic birthright. Until they do so, our higher educational system will be doomed to fail in what Czech writer Milan Kundera called “the struggle of memory against forgetting,” which ultimately is “the struggle of man against power.”
Eric Bledsoe is Director of Curricular Improvement and Academic Outreach at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
