Last week I spent eight hours a day in Louisville, Kentucky grading Advanced Placement exams. Even when you count the fact that the test takers are no longer mostly a hand picked elite, the results are stunningly bad. I am pretty sure that I am bound by some confidentiality arrangement to not discuss specific numbers, but many, many times, the people at my table saw essays where students believed American blacks were still enslaved at the time of World War II. That was only one example. Another repeated mistake was confusing the Vietnam War and World War II's Pacific Theatre. All too many, I would say I saw almost a hundred myself, believed that FDR interned the Japanese because they were Communists.
No, the teachers are not teaching it this way. The kids are tuning out. And in some cases you cannot blame them.
Another overriding issue was the self-hatred that came out of too many essays. Not individually, but hatred of their country, hatred of Caucasians, belittlement of national leaders such as Franklin Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson. On a question about Japanese internments during World War II, FDR is portrayed by some students as equal to Hitler in brutality. Jefferson is described as having raped his female slaves in another (even his worst detractors and rumor mongers say his one affair was consensual, if it even happened at all which David McCullough among others finds very debatable.) Why would students want to learn history if all they hear is how horrible their ancestors and national heroes were? Even if the teachers do not present it this way, the textbooks do. Meanwhile they showed little understanding of the fundamentals of the American ideal except in cases where it was violated.
I will say this, one of the questions that we did not grade did invite the students to say positive things about the early formation of the Republican Party. I glanced at some of those and of course saw mass confusion. The Republican Party was formed in the 1850s, some of them said, to fight slavery at home and Communism abroad.
Newt Gingrich last week at a GOP fundraiser issued a call to reemphasize American History. I would go farther and say we must get back to teaching American values from the start. If nothing else replace one grade of elementary school with Schoolhouse Rock videos. As you have seen on here each Monday, kids could learn more about history, capitalism, and other necessary things from these well-produced videos than they can from almost any other source. Seriously though, we must return to old style history. Put Washington and Lincoln's portraits back on the wall. I mean prints, not some goofy cartoon looking thing. Teach about our heroes, including the people who led, the people who fought, the people who innovated, and the people who risked. We must teach that Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt, J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and others were not these horrible oppressors but men who did the best they could with the material God gave them. Without the legacy of Morgan, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and others we do not defeat fascism in World War II, simple as that.
I agree with Newt Gingrich's call to restore American History. But we cannot let the left wing masochists control it.
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