Most college students think America invented slavery, professor finds

The College Fix ^ | October 31, 2016 | Kate Hardiman

[grundle]

For 11 years, Professor Duke Pesta gave quizzes to his students at the beginning of the school year to test their knowledge on basic facts about American history and Western culture.

The most surprising result from his 11-year experiment? Students’ overwhelming belief that slavery began in the United States and was almost exclusively an American phenomenon, he said.

“Most of my students could not tell me anything meaningful about slavery outside of America,” Pesta told The College Fix. “They are convinced that slavery was an American problem that more or less ended with the Civil War, and they are very fuzzy about the history of slavery prior to the Colonial era. Their entire education about slavery was confined to America.”

Pesta, currently an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, has taught the gamut of Western literature—from the Classics to the modern—at seven different universities, ranging from large research institutions to small liberal arts colleges to branch campuses. He said he has given the quizzes to students at Purdue University, University of Tennessee Martin, Ursinus College, Oklahoma State University, and University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.

The origin of these quizzes, which Pesta calls “cultural literacy markers,” was his increasing discomfort with gaps in his students’ foundational knowledge.

“They came to college without the basic rudiments of American history or Western culture and their reading level was pretty low,” Pesta told The Fix.

Before even distributing the syllabus for his courses, Pesta administered his short quizzes with basic questions about American history, economics and Western culture. For instance, the questions asked students to circle which of three historical figures was a president of the United States, or to name three slave-holding countries over the last 2,000 years, or define “capitalism” and “socialism” in one sentence each.

Often, more students connected Thomas Jefferson to slavery than could identify him as president, according to Pesta. On one quiz, 29 out of 32 students responding knew that Jefferson owned slaves, but only three out of the 32 correctly identified him as president. Interestingly, more students— six of 32—actually believed Ben Franklin had been president.

Pesta said he believes these students were given an overwhelmingly negative view of American history in high school, perpetuated by scholars such as Howard Zinn in “A People’s History of the United States,” a frequently assigned textbook.

What’s more, he began to observe a shift in his students’ quiz responses in the early 2000s. Before that time, Pesta described his students as “often historically ignorant, but not politicized.” Since the early 2000s, Pesta has found that “many students come to college preprogrammed in certain ways.”

“They cannot tell you many historical facts or relate anything meaningful about historical biographies, but they are, however, stridently vocal about the corrupt nature of the Republic, about the wickedness of the founding fathers, and about the evils of free markets,” Pesta said. “Most alarmingly, they know nothing about the fraught history of Marxist ideology and communist governments over the last century, but often reductively define socialism as ‘fairness.’”

Pesta also noted that, early on, his students’ “blissful ignorance was accompanied by a basic humility about what they did not know.” But over time he said he increasingly saw “a sense of moral superiority in not knowing anything about our ‘racist and sexist’ history and our ‘biased’ institutions.”

“As we now see on campus,” Pesta said, “social justice warriors are arguing that even reading the great books of Western culture is at best a micro-aggression, and at worst an insidious form of cultural imperialism and indoctrination.”

Pesta, an outspoken critic of Common Core, said he believes that these attitudes will become more pronounced moving forward, due to Common Core architect David Coleman’s rewrite of Advanced Placement American and European history standards.

Pesta argues that Coleman, now president of the College Board, “has further politicized the teaching of history, reducing the story of Western culture to little more than a litany of crimes, exploitations, and genocides, while simultaneously whitewashing the history of ideologies like socialism and communism.”

Despite no longer giving the quizzes, Pesta told The Fix that he continues “to seek effective ways to teach students the literature of Western culture, which it is not only alien and complex, but often condemned by students before it is truly encountered.”

“We must absolutely teach those areas where Western culture has fallen short, but always with the recognition that such criticism is possible because of the freedoms and advantages offered by Western culture,” he said.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Our educational system is a dismal failure.

If you are a collectivist, it is a resounding success.

[goodnesswins]

Yes...of course, in America...likely college students don’t know where other countries are

[KarlInOhio]

‘If anyone ever explained the Barbary Pirates to them, their heads would explode.’

they’d probably think it was a minor league baseball team...

When you get picked up by the Barbary Pirates, you are not likely to move up to Pittsburgh.

[piasa]

There were no muslims in Biblical times...they came much later.

[simpson96]

It seems to me, when it comes to history and civics, the average home-schooled 12 year old can run circles around the average 22 year old college graduate.

[AZJeep]

Caffa, now Theodosia, on Crimean peninsula, was the world largest slave market. Millions, mostly Ukrainians, were sold to Turkish slavery. Turks had they own slave army called Janissaries.

[july4thfreedomfoundation]

Dumbasses should go back to kindergarten.

[MissEdie]

Well, that’s what they were taught in school during the obama years. Proves none of them have ever read The Bible.

[Rebelbase]

Álvar Núñez AKA Cabeza De Vaca was a Spanish explorer who was captured by indians around Galveston in 1527 and held as a slave for years and years before escaping to Mexico.

[CodeToad]

Most college students wouldn’t get admitted to any college in in 1900. They demanded academic excellence back then.

[rlmorel]

LOL, so true..but to Leftists, they lionize Native Americans, as this perfectly amicable and peaceable people completely in harmony with nature and each other.

The Noble Savage.

They regard them in the same way they regard Polar Bears. As a tool, or a totem.

When they want to be pious and pull at the emotions of a species that would make people do anything to stop their extinction as a result of the carbon emissions of evil man...it is The Polar Bear.

When they want to virtue signal and force Americans to be ashamed of their past, their smallpox encrusted blankets, their lying treaties, and their genocide...it is the Native American.

Don't get me wrong-I greatly admire many Native American tribes, but the difference is: I don't lionize them and look at them through rose colored glasses the way the Left does. I view them as I view most cultures and people: to be admired in some ways, and decried in others. I can admire them without accepting as a good their bad points.

WIth Native Americans, most tribes overall I find more positive than negative. The Aztecs, however...something was indeed wrong with them.

You get the idea. This why I like to poke the Leftists about Native Americans who routinely preyed on neighbors and hauled them off as slaves or something to be sold.

Hell, Leftists have so little interest in history and the useful knowledge that can be freely obtained from it, that they view the Aztecs, Incas, Mayans, Musims, and Pharaohs with the same benevolent and ignorant prism through they view brutal pirates as lovable and jolly with an unbreakable Thieves Honor and merciful streak.

They never take the time to learn of pine tar encrusted bodies in iron cages hung at the entrances of major ports all over the world, and wonder for a split second why so many places all over the known earth treated pirates like that.

Leftists are sick.

To that end, on a slightly different path, Bill Whittle has a great video he put out titled: "What Do You Fear?" which talks about a recent survey taken by one of the Alphabet Networks that asked Democrats what the top 12 things they were fearful of, and asked Republicans the same question.

And here are the top 12 fears of Trump supporters:

And here are the top 12 fears of Biden supporters:

It is frightening. People on the Left are sick and deranged. Bill Whittle explains it all in this excellent video.

[rlmorel]

The Iroquois were not at all bashful at engaging in extreme sadism if you were someone they took a dislike to.

I read a bit about them in Samuel Eliot Morison’s excellent book: “The Great Explorers”.

In the same book (I think) he talked about Giovanni da Verizzano (The Verizzano Bridge in NY) and how he was exploring the East coast of North America (heading South) and went ashore in Guadaloupe by himself, and was set upon, slain, and gleefully eaten warm and raw in full sight of the men on his ship by Caribe natives. They were just out of cannon range, and nobody could do anything about it.

Maybe that tribe needed to be erased.

It also explained why may indigenous Americans Columbus encountered wanted to be friends with him, because they were scared to death of the Caribes, and for good reason.

[cowboyusa]

Kehmer Rouge.

[cowboyusa]

In a way, it coming out into the open is better, people can see it now.

[Reily]

The truth is many stone age cultures practiced forms of cannibalism. North American Indians did:

https://www.amazon.com/Cannibalism-Headhunting-Human-Sacrifice-America/dp/0911469338/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=North+American+Indian+cannibalism&qid=1614400164&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Man-Corn-Cannibalism-Prehistoric-Southwest/dp/087480566X/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=North+American+Indian+cannibalism&qid=1614400185&sr=8-3

https://www.amazon.com/Hamatsa-Enigma-Cannibalism-Pacific-Coast-ebook/dp/B00CLV4RI2/ref=sr_1_8?dchild=1&keywords=North+American+Indian+cannibalism&qid=1614400185&sr=8-8

[17th Miss Regt]

Barbery Pirates

Those are hair stylists cutting hair without following proper COVID protocols, right?

[rlmorel]

Of course. I find it interesting that Leftists have gone out of their way to say that cannibalism is exaggerated and didn’t really happen.

Interferes with their Noble Savage outlook I guess.

[5th MEB]

One of the problems with modern students is that most of them have never been exposed to the BIBLE.

Other than a religious text it is also a great HISTORY text.

It’s a shame, but we have only ourselves to blame; we have raised two and a half or three full generations that have NO IDEA what is contained in the most important book in not just western culture, but a lot of cultures world wide.

Kids today only believe in winning trophies (whether earned or not) and kneeling to their two gods; MONEY and STUFF.

[Reily]

Agree !

When I say most I should have been bolder and said all stone age cultures !

Europe:

https://www.amazon.com/Warfare-Neolithic-Europe-Archaeological-Anthropological/dp/147387985X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Neolithic+warfare&qid=1614400984&sr=8-1

Asia: Though the Asian Neolithic is very very poorly researched & documented

https://www.amazon.com/Wake-Jomon-Mariners-Voyage-Pacific/dp/0071449027/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=stone+age+asia&qid=1614401225&sr=8-3

[5th MEB]

I may agree with that sentiment, but the normal LIB/PROG/SOCIALIST/COMMUNIST/DEMOCRAT response would be;

YOU NAZIRACISTMYSOGINISTHOMOPHOBICWHITEMAN!!!!!!

yes; in their language that is all ONE WORD.