In time for the 150th anniversary of the tragic night when John Wilkes Booth slipped into Ford’s Theater and shot President Abraham Lincoln, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni released a survey that reveals another tragedy: Lincoln—and much of his legacy—is being lost to the ages. According to the survey, only half of the American public could correctly identify when the Civil War took place, and just 18% knew the Emancipation Proclamation meant slaves were free in areas still in rebellion. This is just one in a series of surveys examining historical amnesia about American history.
A new survey commissioned by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni sheds a bright light on our nation’s civic knowledge crisis. Colleges and universities significantly contribute to the problem by chipping away at their core requirements in essential areas of knowledge; students graduate unprepared for informed citizenship and the workforce. U.S. history is often […]
In honor of the 70th anniversary of D-Day, ACTA releases a GfK survey on historical amnesia about World War II. The study found that a quarter of American adults don’t know that D-Day occurred during World War II. It also found that more than half of American adults—including 43% of college students—don’t know Franklin D. […]
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) today released a survey that shows how little college graduates and the general public know about the Constitution. According to the study, nearly 10% of college graduates think Judith Sheindlin—commonly known as Judge Judy—is on the Supreme Court; one-third of college graduates can’t identify the Bill of […]
Some of America’s top colleges, including Rice University in Houston, don’t require history majors to take a single U.S. history course, according to a recent report. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a national nonprofit, surveyed history programs at 76 of the best universities in the nation and found that 53 colleges — including […]
According to an academic watchdog study less than one-third of the top schools in the United States require history majors to take a class in American history, according to a study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a non-profit academic watchdog. The Council surveyed each undergraduate program in U.S. News & World Report’s […]
Given the numerous studies revealing how American education lags behind instruction in other countries in disciplines once thought to be essential, it should come as no surprise that on the 70th anniversary of D-Day, a lot of people are clueless about central elements of the Allied invasion of the European continent on June 6, 1944. […]
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