ACTA has released the second edition of “No U.S. History? How College History Departments Leave the United States out of the Major.” The report found that 18 of the top 25 public universities did not have a wide-ranging American history requirement for students seeking a B.A. in history in the major or core curriculum.
Top universities have neglected the country’s political history and, worse, politicized it. As such, institutions essential to building civic literacy have become engines of division. Take the controversy surrounding the New York Times’ 1619 project, which aims to “reframe” America’s founding instead of aspiring to historical objectivity. Survey research has shown that Americans believe that students should learn and have reasoned conversations about the brutality and horrors of American slavery, as well as the heroic efforts of abolitionists, the Jim Crow era and its aftermath, the failure of Reconstruction, and much else. Schools should work to teach a common history rooted in historical fact. If conservatives and liberals are encouraged to nurture divergent understandings of the country’s principles and history, it will become even harder to talk about race in our society.
Read a Snapshot of the Second Edition of No U.S. History? here.
Read the full report here.
I am deeply grateful to the Law & Liberty editors for organizing this Forum on my essay urging the restoration of genuinely higher learning in America’s universities, especially liberal education as a civic education. I am indebted to each respondent for seriously engaging with my analysis of the multi-faceted crisis facing higher education, and my remedies for private as well as public institutions.
We have been here before, shocked at the level of civic illiteracy. It is clear why, finally, we must act efficiently and effectively and what actions we should take. The solutions are before us.
BLUFFTON, South Carolina (AP) — On the first day of his American National Government class, Prof. Kevin Dopf asks how many of his students are United States citizens. Every hand shoots up.
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