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John and Abigail Adams envisioned an America with a school in every neighborhood and a well-informed citizenry that was adept in languages, literature, and music, as well as science, history, and religion. Their vision was practical until the ages recast it, little by little.

Then, sometime between Joseph McCarthy and Joan Baez, the status quo of the educational system came undone.

Only about 18% of colleges and universities nationwide require the study of history and government in their general education programs.

Students accustomed to a traditional 50/50 split between the humanities and the sciences were capsized academically by the surprise Sputnik launch in 1957. The space race sent higher education into a tizzy, leading to a fixation on improving science education above all. In the succeeding seven decades, resources have consistently risen for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, which has been to our benefit. But this has come at an unnecessary cost: The humanities have been downplayed, devalued, and dodged.

That uneven ratio has bestowed an unfortunate historical illiteracy on three generations. Most people, for example, do not know the philosophical roots of the Declaration of Independence, their rights as laid out in the Constitution, or the civic virtues their teachers should have taught them. For these three reasons, many Americans do not vote in local, state, or national elections.

Universities drop the ball

Even amid this crisis of civic illiteracy, only about 18% of colleges and universities nationwide require the study of history and government in their general education programs. In years past, when the architecture of academe was different, a plethora of institutions, such as Harvard, Rice, Notre Dame, Johns Hopkins, and William & Mary, proffered requirements for focused classes in American history. But their phaseout — which began in the 1960s — was practically completed by 2000.

According to a report from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, at Columbia University:

Students must take at least nine courses to graduate with a B.A. in history. Of these courses, four must be in a chosen field of geographical, chronological, or thematic specialization, and three must be outside of the specialization, including one course removed in time and two courses removed in space.

In other words, the major requires exposure to a variety of histories — none of which need touch on America.

That gap in Columbia’s history major requirements is deeply troubling, though it at least has a contemporary civilization requirement in its signature core curriculum for undergraduates that addresses founding documents and key concepts of United States government. Meanwhile, at Colgate University, which has no such option in its general education requirements:

Students choose one of two pathways to graduate with a B.A. in history. Both require nine courses. The Field of Focus (FoF) Pathway requires one history workshop, seven electives. ... The FoF Pathway allows students to devise individualized, intellectually coherent specializations. Possible fields of focus include environmental history, gender and sexuality, and race and racism.

This reorientation away from the study of American history — even as a point of reference for students focusing their studies on other parts of the world — is now the norm in the American academy. In the 2020-2021 academic year, 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 — nor did 24 of the 25 best national schools.

Even the legendary linchpins of the liberal arts — Amherst, Swarthmore, Vassar, Smith, Williams, and Pomona — fared poorly: 21 out of 25 colleges examined did not have an American history requirement.

The consequences of forgoing the study of American history have a powerful effect on the population. Much of what is not learned — or stays uncorrected — turns into the misinformation that is so damaging in a free and democratic society.

The civic literacy crisis

When eighth graders were asked in 2011 "to choose a ‘belief shared by most people of the United States,’ a majority (51%) picked ‘The government should guarantee everybody a job,’ and only a third chose the correct answer: ‘The government should be a democracy.’”

In 2015, 10% of college graduates believed Judy Sheindlin — TV’s “Judge Judy” — was a member of the Supreme Court.

In 2019, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni found that 18% of American adults thought Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was the architect of the New Deal — a package of programs President Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced in 1933. Twenty-six percent believed Brett Kavanaugh was the current chief justice of the Supreme Court, along with another 14% who identified Antonin Scalia — even though he had been dead for two years at the time of the survey. Only 12% knew the 13th Amendment freed the slaves in the United States, and 30% thought the Equal Rights Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote.

In 2024, an American Council of Trustees and Alumni survey of college students showed that fewer than half identified ideas like “free markets” and “rule of law” as core principles of American civic life. The survey also found that 60% of American college students failed to identify term lengths for members of Congress. A shocking 68% did not know that Congress is the branch that holds the power to declare war; 71% did not know when 18-year-olds gained the right to vote.

All of these results were based on multiple-choice questions. All the respondents had to do was select the correct option out of four possibilities.

Forget history, forgo your future

The late Bruce Cole, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2001 to 2009, admonished, “Unlike a monarchy, a democracy is not automatically self-perpetuating. History and values have to be renewed from generation to generation.”

Our failure to educate future citizens for informed civic participation compromises the country. Institutions need to take the American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s findings to heart and, starting with their requirements for the history major, embrace their obligation to address the crisis in civic education.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPublicAffairs and made available via RealClearWire.


3 Questions Angry Democrats Need To Answer About Illegal Alien Deportations

Democrats and their supporters in the corporate media are still attempting to controversialize the Trump administration’s efforts to remove illegal aliens from the country, as required by federal law. But there are three questions they should all be forced to answer before anyone has to hear more of their whining. Here they are, in no […]

Illegal aliens aren’t just ‘guests’ — they’re future voters



After visiting a nearby resort filled with opulent wokesters, I couldn’t help but notice the signs proclaiming, “Love, not hate, makes America great.” I suspect the signs were meant to remind us of Donald Trump’s supposed nastiness for deporting as many as 50,000 illegal immigrants — most with criminal records. According to the left, such a policy makes Trump a fascist — maybe even the latest incarnation of Hitler.

A "nicer" leader, we’re told, would allow these illegal immigrants — including convicted rapists and other lowlifes — to remain in the country, at least until they exhausted multiple judicial appeals or committed a few more crimes. Why stop there? Let them vote in local elections, receive public assistance, education, and health care. After all, they supposedly enrich our society — or so Democrats insist, as they work tirelessly to provide all these forms of taxpayer-funded hospitality.

When virtue signalers clutch their pearls over Trump’s treatment of ‘nice illegal rapists,’ I have to wonder if they’re playing dumb.

But why did Democratic presidents we’re supposed to venerate — Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — get a free pass for far harsher deportation records? Clinton expelled close to a million illegal aliens with minimal judicial involvement, even boasting about his deportations during his re-election campaign. Obama, the left’s beloved heartthrob, threw out over four million illegal immigrants, aided by Trump’s current border czar Tom Homan, all without major interference from Democratic-appointed judges.

Compared to Clinton and Obama, Trump’s deportation numbers look paltry, especially given the legal and media warfare waged against him.

Even as recently as 2006, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) — now screaming about Trump’s “cruelty” — eagerly pushed for building a border wall. Thirty years ago, few Democratic senators would have voted against it. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), back then, warned against flooding the country with unskilled foreign labor that would hurt America’s most vulnerable workers. Obama himself praised tougher immigration controls. In 2006, Democrats still held some loyalty to their working-class base. They understood that saturating American communities with third world lumpenproletariat — not to mention foreign gangs — would devastate the working class.

That was before Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Pete Buttigieg, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), and Rachel Levine became the faces of the rebranded Democratic Party.

Since then, both national parties have swapped electoral bases. Republicans moved away from country-club elites and realigned with the white — and increasingly Hispanic — working class. Democrats abandoned their traditional blue-collar support to embrace progressive white women, the LGBTQ lobby, government bureaucrats, black militants, and now, the cause of illegal immigrants.

For Democrats, the strategy is simple: expand the non-working-class base. Biden’s administration opened the border to as many as 10 million illegal aliens, and anyone with a functioning brain can see why.

Yet, when virtue signalers clutch their pearls over Trump’s treatment of “nice illegal rapists,” I have to wonder if they’re playing dumb. Do they really not know why their party flooded the country with illegal aliens? Do they honestly think slogans about "love" explain why Democrats fight tooth and nail to keep even convicted criminals from deportation?

Every illegal immigrant represents a potential future Democratic voter. If Trump’s administration was allowed to make moral distinctions among the "undocumented," Democrats might lose too many future loyalists. Better, from their view, to defend even a wife-beating, MS-13-affiliated “Maryland man” than risk losing tomorrow’s votes.

Perhaps I’m being unfair. Maybe the Democratic cheering squad doesn’t know — or care — how radically its party reversed itself on immigration. Maybe leftists assume their Democratic heroes always held the same radical social views as Tim Walz and Hakeem Jeffries.

Most live in the present, parroting whatever slogans the media and party elites hand them. If journalists and historians hide the truth, these activists show little curiosity to uncover it.

Meanwhile, the media and judicial attacks on Trump’s supposedly “Nazi-like” immigration policies continue to erode public support. Trump now polls negatively even on immigration, the very issue that propelled him into the White House.

If this delusion holds, Democrats may succeed in securing nearly all of their future voters.

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