Sad State of Affairs

Excellent commentary from Noel this Friday over the sad state of affairs in the education of United States history among American middle school students.

Author and historian David McCullough was the key witness at [a congressional] hearing and expressed two major concerns: history text books, and teacher training. As a middle school history teacher I can tell you that these are indeed two of the biggest problems when teaching history. Take a look at several different history books and you'll see that they're all the same, very basic and very boring descriptions of various events throughout the course of American history. Descriptions that barely scratch the surface and don't tell the whole story. McCullough has evaluated school history books and found another problem and trend, "typeface in those books is growing larger, the illustrations are more lavish, and the content is shrinking." It seems as though the textbook companies are assuming students don't like to read, or aren't good readers.

If we don't learn of (and from) our past, it will be awfully hard to face the challenges of the future.

But history isn't the only subject in which our students find themselves underperforming. Sadly (and perhaps more importantly), science, math and engineering education in the United States is woefully inadequate. As columnist Thomas Friedman puts it:

If we don't do something soon and dramatic to reverse this "erosion"...we are not going to have the scientific foundation to sustain our high standard of living in 15 or 20 years.

And of course our Republican-controlled government doesn't help. They slashed National Science Foundation funding in this year's budget. The way they see it, who needs science? The fables of the Bible are sure to secure our place as the world's super-power. Right?

How do math and science education secure our place as the leader of the free world, you ask? Again, Mr. Friedman:

You give me an America that is energy-independent and I will give you sharply reduced oil revenues for the worst governments in the world. I will give you political reform from Moscow to Riyadh to Tehran. Yes, deprive these regimes of the huge oil windfalls on which they depend and you will force them to reform by having to tap their people instead of oil wells.

Sure, it would require some sacrifice. But remember J.F.K.'s words when he summoned us to go to the moon on Sept. 12, 1962: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."

But if his 5 years in the White House are any indication, George W. Bush won't step up to the plate. After all, rather than summon us to do great and extraordinary things in the days after 9/11, Georgie Boy asked us to "go shopping."

The man is a true visionary.