2008 California Election Forum

I love history; my wife doesn’t. But we both appreciate the importance of American history and its impact on political thought. Unfortunately, American history is not being taught to students.

Two of the biggest problems are:

• Liberal teachers who teach anti-American hatred and liberal ideology.
• Multicultural textbooks that water down American history and go overboard in bringing up obscure personalities and events just to show diversity. They leave out important events, thoughts and lectures. And they go out of their way to be critical of America's past.

Now, the University of Connecticut’s Department of Public Policy has helped produce a survey called The Coming Crisis in Citizenship: Higher Education’s Failure to Teach America’s History and Institutions.

Last year, they surveyed more than 14,000 randomly selected college freshman and seniors at 50 colleges and universities.

Here are a couple of surprising results:

• Seniors scored just 1.5% higher on average than freshman on American history and the economy.
• If the survey were a test, seniors would fail with an average score of 53.2%, or an F.
• College seniors at Brown, Georgetown and Yale knew less than freshman about history, government, foreign affairs and the economy.

The complete report can be seen at: www.americancivicliteracy.org.