Information Related to "What We Don't Know Can and Will Hurt Us"
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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," July 14). This is virtually the same thing as saying Americans' grasp of their own history and government is becoming very feeble.
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. Consider 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, but priceless, education
Some 50 years ago my own experience was not by any means unique, but it apparently would be now.
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