“Graduates Know Even Less About History”
Something known even to historian/writer David McCullogh, as noted in
this exerpt from “Imprimis” of April 2005 from his speech titled
“Knowing History and Knowing Who We Are”.
URL for the article:
http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2005&month=04
Our Failure, Our Duty
We are raising a generation of young Americans who are by-and-large
historically illiterate. And it’s not their fault. There have been
innumerable studies, and there’s no denying it. I’ve experienced it
myself again and again. I had a young woman come up to me after a
talk one morning at the University of Missouri to tell me that she
was glad she came to hear me speak, and I said I was pleased
she had shown up.
She said, ”Yes, I’m very pleased, because until now I never understood that
all of the 13 colonies —the original 13 colonies—were on the east coast.“
Now you hear that and you think: What in the world have we done?
How could this young lady, this wonderful young American, become a
student at a fine university and not know that?
I taught a seminar at Dartmouth of seniors majoring in history,
honor students, 25 of them. The first morning we sat down and I said,
”How many of you know who George Marshall was?“
Not one.
There was a long silence and finally one young man asked,
”Did he have, maybe, something to do with the Marshall Plan?“
And I said yes, he certainly did, and that’s a good place to begin
talking about George Marshall.
Hillsdale has been brought up twice during this discussion. Which represents Hillsdale?