While technology expands exponentially, the kind of knowledge we urgently need to survive ebbs and wanes.
by John Ross Schroeder
A feature article in USA Today tells us, "Most American kids and adults don't even have a basic knowledge of our Constitution" (Nat Hentoff, "What You Don't Know Can Hurt You," USA Today, International Version, July 14, 2006). This is virtually the same thing as saying Americans' grasp of their own history and government is becoming very feeble.
Indeed retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor said some shocking words about modern education. "Public schools have pretty much stopped teaching government, civics and American history...I truly don't know how long we can survive as a strong nation if our younger citizens don't understand the nature of our government... That is something you have to learn" (ibid., emphasis added throughout).
Many Americans are also somewhat ignorant of their national heroes. Take George Washington, called the father of America.
As noted British historian Paul Johnson cannily observed, "George Washington is at present an unfashionable subject in American historical writing. Joseph Ellis [author of His Excellency George Washington] points out that 'any aspiring doctoral candidate who declares an interest in Washington's career as commander-in-chief or president has inadvertently confessed intellectual bankruptcy.' More 'fashionable' he says, would be to study 'ordinary soldiers in his army or the slaves at Mount Vernon'" ("America's Greatest Stroke of Luck," The Daily Telegraph, March 20, 2005).
Political correctness has reached new heights, especially in the academic world.
A small-town education in Texas
Some 50 years ago my own experience was not by any means unique, but it apparently would be now. My junior year in high school (Kenedy, Texas) was transformed by a teacher named Leonard Harold Menn. He taught both American and world history in a manner that inspired many of my classmates to hit their history books and bone up on current affairs. We regularly had to write essays on such concepts as the American federal system, the separation of powers and other subjects of a similar nature.
