Americans would be hard pressed to find anything encouraging in the results of a national telephone survey of high school students released Feb. 26. The survey, commissioned by a group that advocates more well-rounded high school curriculums, reported large numbers of 17-year-olds who could not identify basic historic dates or literary works. The sponsors point to the No Child Left Behind Act the culprit, and call for needed expansions to high school education. The six-year-old No Child law, for all its flaws, may not be the only cause of American students’ ignorance, but it certainly represents a symptom of an education system that neglects teaching students vital knowledge about the world. Educators should take heed.
From Jay Leno mocking uninformed Americans to the ironic viral video of a Miss Teen USA pageant contestant stumbling through an explanation of why Americans lack basic geographic knowledge, these same Americans are constantly bombarded with news of how poorly U.S. education stacks up against its global counterparts. In fairness, some of the questions asked by the February survey addressed relatively obscure historic and literary facts for a high school focus group, but the students surveyed fail to make the grade by any reasonable standard. The culprit is an education system that sets the bar too low — especially concerning history and geography — when grading students.
For all the stress placed on Americans’ lagging performance in math and science fields, our performance in naming basic facts about the world, past and present, is at least equally lacking. Since long before the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law, American public schools have pushed these subjects to the wayside. Well into middle school, many institutions deem history, geography and sociology too unimportant for their own classes, instead grouping the subjects under a single class called “social studies.” Under low state proficiency requirements — which have only been reinforced by the standards demanded by No Child — history sometimes comes secondary to math and English.
Though countless teachers strive to teach students about history and geography each day, the authorities in charge of childhood education often neglect these topics or make it all but impossible for most students to take an interest in them. As important as varied viewpoints are to teaching history, educators have a responsibility to teach children undisputable current and historic facts – these truths are necessities, not luxuries. For a healthy democracy to function, average citizens should know where they live before deciding where they stand.