27 June 2011

Historically Illiterate ~ Generation of Ignorants...

Brian Bolduc shares his interview David McCullough in the WSJournal piece Don't Know Much About History...
"We're raising young people who are, by and large, historically illiterate," David McCullough tells me on a recent afternoon in a quiet meeting room at the Boston Public Library. [...] "History is a source of strength," he says. "It sets higher standards for all of us." But helping to ensure that the next generation measures up, he says, will be a daunting task. [Among the challenges are that] "History is often taught in categories -- women's history, African American history, environmental history -- so that many of the students have no sense of chronology. They have no idea what followed what." What's more, many textbooks have become "so politically correct as to be comic. Very minor characters that are currently fashionable are given considerable space, whereas people of major consequence farther back" -- such as, say, Thomas Edison -- "are given very little space or none at all." Mr. McCullough's eyebrows leap at his final point: "And they're so badly written. They're boring!"

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