Commentary
In his eloquent and prophetic January 1989 farewell address to the nation, President Ronald Reagan gave us a somber warning,
saying, “If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in the erosion of the American spirit.”
In many ways, Reagan’s words echo the words of another former president, James Madison, the author of the U.S. Constitution, who
said, “The advancement and diffusion of knowledge ... is the only guardian of true liberty,”
and “It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.”
As we gather together to celebrate the freedom bequeathed to us through the signing of the Declaration of Independence 247 years ago in Philadelphia, our nation has received another sobering reminder of how woefully ignorant we’re becoming of the sacrifices made to achieve that freedom, our collective history, and even how our system of government works.
In May, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released its
report on the state of American education, including civic education, and the news was sobering. The report found that in 2022, the average U.S. history score at the eighth-grade level decreased by five points compared to 2018 and by nine points compared to 2014. Forty percent of students were below the most basic level in U.S. history knowledge.
In fact, only 13 percent of eighth graders were deemed to be proficient in history and 22 percent in civics. Presently, most elementary schools only allow 30 minutes per week for social studies, and often that’s taken up with pushing the latest progressive causes rather than teaching American history or civics. Only seven states have stand-alone civics requirements for middle school students. These statistics are just another example of studies that have shown the woeful knowledge of our historical and civic knowledge over the past several decades.
George Will
wrote in The Washington Post about the result of this civic ignorance: “Time was, when the school year ended, parents worried about ‘summer learning loss.’ Nowadays, there is less learning to worry about losing.”
Or, as the “A Nation at Risk” report (
pdf) about our nation’s educational system warned 40 years ago, “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might have viewed it as an act of war.”
Thus, statistics such as these confirm the concerns of Madison and Reagan: If we lack the diffusion of knowledge or have no memory of our history, our freedom will dissipate as well. We become a nation that no longer knows its most basic principles—or, as another former president, Dwight Eisenhower, warned us in his first inaugural
address, “A people that values its privileges over its principles soon loses both.”
There are
ramifications for our society as a result of our historical and civic ignorance. I’m convinced that our current lack of civility; lack of understanding of how our government works, including the checks and balances between the three branches of the federal government; and our demands for personal “rights” over collective unity have been caused by the lack of teaching of history and civics throughout our educational system.
As one of my friends says, “You can’t be responsible for what you don’t know.” Our schoolchildren are being kept in the dark about our history and system of government. They simply don’t know better. So it’s difficult to blame them when they act out of ignorance.
So this Independence Day, as we celebrate our freedom, it’s my hope that this annual reminder will spark a national revival of teaching history and civics in our nation’s schools—one that paints the true American story—not one that paints America as a villain but instead includes an open and honest discussion of our accomplishments as well as those areas in which we may have fallen short in the past. We can no longer be indifferent, and we can’t allow our children to be indifferent, either. The price—our freedom—is too high a cost.
As the authors of the 1776 Commission report (
pdf) released in 2021 wrote, “It is our mission—all of us—to restore our national unity by rekindling a brave and honest love for our country, and by raising a new generation of citizens who not only know the self-evident truths of our founding, but act worthy of them.”
If we’re to preserve the freedom we’re celebrating, we must equip future generations with the knowledge of from whence we came, so we‘ll always remember that we’re a nation built on unwavering principles that are the basis of the privilege of freedom that we all enjoy. That’s how we’ll keep the American spirit alive.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
