U.S. students have returned to school this year at a moment of crisis in American education. As the recently released National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found, only 12 percent of high school seniors, 17 percent of eighth-graders and 20 percent of fourth-graders qualified as proficient in U.S. history. How can a country expect to survive when nearly nine out of 10 seniors don't know their basic history?
Answer: It can't. When only 35 percent of fourth-graders know the purpose of the Declaration of Independence, then something is fundamentally wrong with not only our educational system, but also the future of our country. As Thomas Jefferson said, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
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