STAFF REPORT

STAFF REPORT

ARLINGTON, Va. — A remarkable percentage of Americans — children and adults alike — lack even basic knowledge of our nation’s history, according to a report from the Lexington Institute.

The “Teaching of American History: Promise and Performance” study shows that, “In the most recent round of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only one-fourth of American schoolchildren tested as proficient in their knowledge of U.S. history.”

Adults fared no better.

“While 60 percent of the adults surveyed knew how many children ‘Jon and Kate’ of reality-TV fame have, only slightly more than half of them could correctly identify James Madison as the ‘Father of the Constitution’ from a list where the other choices were Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington,” said Robert Holland, a Lexington Senior Fellow and author of the study.

A root cause of this deficiency, according to Holland, is that primary and secondary school educators are often grossly under qualified to teach history.

“The best available evidence suggests that preparation of pre-collegiate history teachers is inexcusably lacking in rigor and substance,” Holland said. “In the Little Rock public school district, for example, only one percent of history teachers hold a degree in history.

“The appalling results of de-emphasizing the study of U.S. history in elementary and secondary schools have become painfully obvious in recent years,” stated Holland. “School reformers need to do much more to restore history as a vital subject in American education.”

The Lexington Institute is a nonprofit, public-policy think tank based near Washington, D.C., that focuses on issues of surpassing importance to the future of democracy, including education and national security.