Is History Education Really Poor or Bad?
If we do a poor job of teaching American history in our public schools, will anyone really notice? Will anyone really care?
Five years ago, I conducted a national survey of high school students, seeking their opinions on American history education. No surprise, the average student had no real interest in learning or retaining American history. Student after student noted that they found history class to be both boring and irrelevant. The only course that high schoolers disliked more than American history was art.
Last month, Lincoln Park Strategies (LPS), on behalf of my Driving Force Institute for Public Engagement (DFI), conducted a survey of 1,000 Americans. They sought to understand our collective opinions on American history education today. And what LPS found may shock you … or it may not.
Only 15% of Americans believe that U.S. public schools are doing an excellent job when it comes to teaching U.S. history. And 43% believe that schools are doing a poor or bad job teaching this essential subject.
Boomers have the lowest impression of history instruction today, with 53% saying history education was poor or bad. Gen Z students had the most positive opinion of history instruction, with 46% stating it was excellent or good.
The same DFI survey offers confusing and contradictory views of American history education today. Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed, 62%, believe that states should have the freedom to create their own history curricula, but should not be able to rewrite history or ignore basic facts, while 38% believe states should have the ability to focus on events that are important to their particular viewpoints. More than half, 54%, believe history instruction needs to be about teaching both the “good and the bad,” while 46% believe it should be focused on teaching “traditional American values.” And 62% of those surveyed believe that teaching the “negative or dark facts in history is important to better understanding our past,” while 38% believe that focusing on such negatives “creates divisions and puts certain demographic groups above others.”
We even chose to drill down on a few content areas, offering some even more confusing findings. When it comes to teaching about our first president, 57% believe lessons about George Washington should focus on his leading the Continental Army and 56% believe it should focus on Washington’s successes in war, while 4% of Americans believe George Washington should not be taught in high school classrooms. Yes, one in 20 believe GW our founding father is not worthy of classroom time.
Even more startling, only 56% of those surveyed believe that the U.S. military academies should strongly support the teaching of the history of the Tuskegee Airmen, while 7% oppose such lessons being offered at all.
For those who think that these low scores are indicative of our negative impressions about public education, they’d be wrong. Overall, Americans have a strong opinion of the current state of public schools, with 51% of those surveyed gave the nation’s public schools an A or B grade, while 56% gave their local schools As or Bs. Only 16% gave public schools nationally a D or F grade, while only 14% gave similar grades to their local schools. Gen Zers have the greatest faith in public schools, with 69% giving them A or B grades, while Gen Xers have the lowest opinion, with 20% saying public schools nationally earn a D or F grade.
If we look at such perceptions demographically, 75% of Asian Americans gave American public schools an A or B grade, while 58% of both African American and Latinos gave As and Bs. Only 44% of Whites surveyed gave the public schools an A or B grade. And 58% of those who voted for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris gave the nation’s public schools an A or B grade, while 48% of President Donald Trump voters did the same. Nearly twice as many Trump voters (20% to 11%) gave American public schools a D or F grade.
What does all of this mean? Simply put, we are at a crisis point when it comes to teaching American history in our public schools. Recent years have demonstrated how important American history knowledge is to the strength of our nation, our economy, and our civil society. Yet we are seeing that history is viewed as uninteresting, irrelevant, and poorly taught. Adults see poor quality, students see no point.
It shouldn’t surprise us, then, that so few young people actually know American history. In a survey DFI conducted four years ago, only 27% of those under the age of 45 could pass a basic history test, with questions coming from the practice tests for the U.S. citizenship exam. Despite taking history to earn a high school diploma, they didn’t learn, didn’t retain, or didn’t care about the basics.
Learning and knowing history is about more than simply retaining names, dates, and locations. Effective history education empowers learners, teaching them teamwork, critical thinking, and cognitive development. It allows learners to think like historians, asking probing questions, exploring new ideas, and questioning why they hadn’t learned about issues and people and events sooner.
Collectively, we like to talk a good game about how important civics and civic activism is. But we cannot become good citizens, we cannot become strong contributors to or civil society, without learning and appreciating history. Expecting us to be civically involved without a strong foundation of history knowledge is like expecting one to be an effective medical doctor without ever learning biology. It just can’t be done. We all need to know the foundations before we can build upon it.
It’s a cryin’ shame that we care so little about the state of American history education today, so much so that the U.S. Department of Education is now planning on doing away with the U.S. history NAEP exams, a test provided to high school students just once every four years. We are rightly concerned with our struggles to teach reading and math, particularly in the elementary grades. We should be similarly concerned, if not more so, with history education in the secondary grades.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. There are ways to make history education relevant and interesting to young people. There are ways to demonstrate the value of history education. And there are opportunities to highlight those educators who have successfully brought American history to life in their classrooms, instilling an appreciation for the academic subject with their students.
It is possible, but we must commit to it. We must embrace American history and its importance to the success of our communities, our nation, our economy, and our civil society. Until then, we are doomed to repeat our historical mistakes, while failing to recognize our successes. And we are unable to truly embody the notion of American exceptionalism that so many of us speak of.
