What does the average college graduate know today about world history? I'm sure you've seen one of those man in the street interview series where random people are questioned and seem to know nothing of American history. Who was president during the Civil War? Answers include George Washington and John Kennedy. Only a few know that the correct answer is Abraham Lincoln. Those TV interviews, however, don't limit themselves to college graduates. What exactly do they know about world history?
I started thinking about this subject when I read about what happened two nights ago on WGN, a local Chicago TV station. On their local news show, the anchor mentioned that it was the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. So far, so good. The problem, however, is that on the screen behind the anchor, the station put up a picture of a yellow Jewish star with the word "Jude" written in the center. In case you don't know, that is the sign that the Nazis forced Jews in Europe to wear during World War II. It was designed to separate the Jews from the local population and to stigmatize them in the days prior to their being sent to the Nazi death camps. In short, it was a terrible and completely offensive thing for WGN to do. WGN has apologized, but seems to claim ignorance was the cause of the mistake. How can it be that anyone with even some acquaintance with the history of the last century would make such an error? Imagine a group of college students who dress up as members of the Ku Klux Klan for Halloween and then say that they didn't know anything about that group's history.
So much of the study of history has been changed to fit political narratives that the actual facts are being lost. High school students may learn about how some members of the Continental Congress that passed and signed the Declaration of Independence owned slaves, but how many of them know the grievances that the colonies had against the British crown. How many students graduating college know the astonishing difference between the American Constitution and the government systems in the remainder of the world when that Constitution was written. (The answer is that in America, power was vested in the people who gave some of it to the government, while in the rest of the world, power was vested in the government which might or might now give some of it to the people.) How many college graduates know how the countries of the Middle East came to be formed? How many know the difference between Sunni and Shiite Moslems? How many understand why there is a North Korean regime that considers itself at war with South Korea? How many can explain why countries like Spain and Portugal which were the major world powers in the 15th and 16th centuries became minor European countries today.
The point is not that there are a lot of facts that many folks don't know. The questions above are not of minor importance. Each of them affects major aspects of life in the world today, and anyone who cannot answer them is missing a major part of the knowledge needed to succeed in today's world. The real point is that our country seems to be throwing away the knowledge base that we need to succeed. Just look at the foreign policy pursued by president Obama. He and his advisors run their policies based upon Obama's ideology rather than upon the actual facts. The problem, of course, is that ideology is not fact. Actual facts matter much more. For example, Obama's ideology required him to get all American troops out of Iraq because that was a "bad" war in his view. The result was a withdrawal that allowed ISIS to form and flourish in the vacuum. Anyone who understood what happened in Afghanistan after the Soviets were expelled from that nation would have been able to foresee what would happen in a similar situation in Iraq. Instead of al Qaeda and 9-11, we got ISIS in Iraq.
It is not too late to change the course of our education system to once again provide graduates with a broad knowledge of world history. Such a move, however, would require jettisoning many of the current liberal fads that have become topics of importance in lieu of history. It needs to happen.
I started thinking about this subject when I read about what happened two nights ago on WGN, a local Chicago TV station. On their local news show, the anchor mentioned that it was the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. So far, so good. The problem, however, is that on the screen behind the anchor, the station put up a picture of a yellow Jewish star with the word "Jude" written in the center. In case you don't know, that is the sign that the Nazis forced Jews in Europe to wear during World War II. It was designed to separate the Jews from the local population and to stigmatize them in the days prior to their being sent to the Nazi death camps. In short, it was a terrible and completely offensive thing for WGN to do. WGN has apologized, but seems to claim ignorance was the cause of the mistake. How can it be that anyone with even some acquaintance with the history of the last century would make such an error? Imagine a group of college students who dress up as members of the Ku Klux Klan for Halloween and then say that they didn't know anything about that group's history.
So much of the study of history has been changed to fit political narratives that the actual facts are being lost. High school students may learn about how some members of the Continental Congress that passed and signed the Declaration of Independence owned slaves, but how many of them know the grievances that the colonies had against the British crown. How many students graduating college know the astonishing difference between the American Constitution and the government systems in the remainder of the world when that Constitution was written. (The answer is that in America, power was vested in the people who gave some of it to the government, while in the rest of the world, power was vested in the government which might or might now give some of it to the people.) How many college graduates know how the countries of the Middle East came to be formed? How many know the difference between Sunni and Shiite Moslems? How many understand why there is a North Korean regime that considers itself at war with South Korea? How many can explain why countries like Spain and Portugal which were the major world powers in the 15th and 16th centuries became minor European countries today.
The point is not that there are a lot of facts that many folks don't know. The questions above are not of minor importance. Each of them affects major aspects of life in the world today, and anyone who cannot answer them is missing a major part of the knowledge needed to succeed in today's world. The real point is that our country seems to be throwing away the knowledge base that we need to succeed. Just look at the foreign policy pursued by president Obama. He and his advisors run their policies based upon Obama's ideology rather than upon the actual facts. The problem, of course, is that ideology is not fact. Actual facts matter much more. For example, Obama's ideology required him to get all American troops out of Iraq because that was a "bad" war in his view. The result was a withdrawal that allowed ISIS to form and flourish in the vacuum. Anyone who understood what happened in Afghanistan after the Soviets were expelled from that nation would have been able to foresee what would happen in a similar situation in Iraq. Instead of al Qaeda and 9-11, we got ISIS in Iraq.
It is not too late to change the course of our education system to once again provide graduates with a broad knowledge of world history. Such a move, however, would require jettisoning many of the current liberal fads that have become topics of importance in lieu of history. It needs to happen.
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