COMMENTARY: Don’t know much about history

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, we are debating an incredible number of issues. Not just about public health or economics, but also about the fundamental ideas of our country.

What decisions should be made by the federal government? What is properly left to the states? What about the “right of the people peaceably to assemble” and the “free exercise” of religion? The list goes on — civics and history being lived out in real time.

But we can’t have an informed debate on these fundamental issues unless we know what we are talking about. Unfortunately, too many citizens of our country don’t understand how our unique form of government works and why America’s founders, faced with duress of their own, chose this form of government. The reason they don’t understand is they weren’t properly taught.

We know this because every national student test on civics and history in the past 25 years has confirmed it. And new results from the quadrennial National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), released last month, are no different.

The most recent tests were given to thousands of American eighth graders. Only 24 percent of students performed at or above the “proficient” level in in civics and just 15 percent in American history.

Some might say: Don’t sweat it. They’ll pick it up in high school.

But that’s not true. In 2010, the last time the tests were given to high school seniors, just 12 percent scored at or above the proficient level in U.S. history. In civics — the test covering the subject of U.S. government — the scores were somewhat better. But still, less than one fourth of all 12th graders (24 percent) performed at or above the proficient level.

For many, this lack of understanding — or worse, the indifference — will last a lifetime. A 2018 survey by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation found, for example, that “only one in three Americans (36 percent) can … pass a multiple-choice test consisting of items taken from the U.S. Citizenship Test” given to immigrants seeking U.S. citizenship.

Sure, public officials often speak about the importance of civic education, but in many cases they are unable or choose to do nothing about it. In 2018, the year the newly released NAEP tests were given, only eight states, according to Education Week — Colorado, Idaho, Maryland, Nevada, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming — required high school students to take a full year of civics. Just 28 states, including New York, required a full year of U.S. history.

This isn’t a partisan issue. As John B. King Jr., who served as education secretary in the Obama administration, told an audience weeks before the 2016 election, “Students need knowledge. They need to know the Constitution and … understand history.”

Fortunately, there’s a solution. We need to place the proper teaching of American history and civics at the center of American education. Students need to study great documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, not just read about them in textbooks.

This kind of education works. It can restore our understanding of the principles that make us Americans. It can help young people see America’s imperfect history as a struggle to live up to our principles of freedom and justice. It can help us all to understand why our country — warts and all — deserves our affection.

In these days of big debates, these principles — this history — can bind us together, giving us a solid foundation on which to carry out our arguments.

For years, we’ve heard how important it is to prepare students for the “21st century workplace.” More important, perhaps, is preparing them for 21st century citizenship. As we’re seeing today, the outcome couldn’t be more important.

Jeffrey Sikkenga is executive director of the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University in Ohio.