Don't Know Much about History

The dumbing down of American schoolchildren proceeds apace. As you know, thanks to the teachers’ unions, school shutdowns caused American children to regress academically.

They were not exactly world beaters to begin with, but they are worse today. When it comes to science and math, American children are lagging behind most serious nations.

Now, we learn, via the Washington Post, that precious few of America’s schoolchildren know much of anything about civics and in the nation’s history.

The Post explains:

Just 13 percent of the nation’s eighth graders were proficient in U.S. history last year, and 22 percent were proficient in civics, marking another decline in performance during the pandemic and sounding an alarm about how well students understand their country and its government.

This tells us that 87% of the nation’s eighth graders failed American history.

The findings, released Wednesday, show a five-point slide since 2018 in the average history score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, often called “the nation’s report card.” In civics, eighth grade scores fell two points, the first decline ever recorded on the tests, which cover the American political system, principles of democracy and other topics.

So, while our politicians are whining interminably about the damage being done to our sacred democracy, our schoolchildren do not, for the most part, know much of anything about America’s political system or history.

Now, teachers are somewhat alarmed by it all. 

“These are two critically important subject areas, not just for the success of students individually in the future, but for our success collectively as a society,” said Patrick Kelly, a 12th-grade government teacher in South Carolina and member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for NAEP.

Kelly said the results partly reflect the way that social studies instruction has been “in many ways marginalized,” particularly at the state level, where officials focus on accountability systems that measure progress only in reading and math.

Allow me to ask a more salient question. How many teachers, how many of those who are charged with teaching American history and civics, love their country? How many are ashamed of America? How many teach that the nation has always been an organized criminal conspiracy, built on slave labor and oppression?

In other words, how much of this problem derives from the absence of patriotism and love of country among our pedagogues?

After all, the problem was aggravated in 2014. And who was president in 2014? Was it a time of patriotic fervor? Was it a time when people celebrated the greatness of America?

If you are looking for explanations, why not start with the most obvious: our political leaders, especially the leaders we had in 2014, did not love their country and did not think it was worth studying America’s successes. You cannot study American history or civics without recounting America's many successes.

West and others said that while the pandemic may have contributed to the lower scores, it clearly does not fully explain it. In U.S. history, scores began falling after 2014 and were down four points by 2018.

As it happened, the pandemic school closures contributed mightily to the learning loss suffered in math and reading.

The decline was not as stunning as math and reading data released in September. Math scores among 9-year-olds fell seven points from 2020 to 2022, in a first-ever decline, while reading scores slipped five points, the largest dip in 30 years. Test scores released in October were similarly stark.

As I have often remarked, our politicians and our elite intellectuals drone on constantly about how we are going to onshore manufacturing. They have failed to notice that we do not have the talent to run most high tech manufacturing. We can only build those factories if we import human capital, from abroad.

Do you find that encouraging?