Amid all the hand-wringing over the recent release of PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) scores showing mediocre achievement by American students in Reading, Science, and Math, I found myself once again wondering: Where was History? Why aren’t we assessing it and publishing the results?
Certainly, nearly every school system across the country has developed and implemented a history and governance curriculum across various grade levels, and new Common Core Standards address this, but why, for so many years, do test scores continue to be aggregated and reported with the omission of the social sciences (except for the painfully recurring appearance on social network sites of appalling misjudgments and misidentifications on U.S. and world geography maps by American students)?
We are rapidly losing a shared heritage of historical knowledge that E. D. Hirsch, Jr., warned us about more than a quarter of a century ago with Cultural Literacy. While researching my most recent book, Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination, I traveled last year to another city and chanced to dine at a fine, upscale restaurant. In the course of the evening its manager came by to welcome me and ask what brought me to her city. When I told her it was to research an aspect of the Lincoln assassination, she looked at me blankly for a moment and then said, “Lincoln was assassinated?” She honestly didn’t know.
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