Here is what David McCullough, author of many history books including Truman, John Adams, and 1776, had to say about the state of history education in America:
Dave Weich, Powell's.com: In your National Book Award acceptance speech and elsewhere, you've talked about a growing problem of historical illiteracy in America.
McCullough: It's a big problem, and I'm doing everything I can to try to help.
Dave: How can people get involved?
McCullough: There's a very good organization that was started by a professor at Princeton, Theodore Rabb, and another professor at Columbia, Ken Jackson, called The National Council for History Education, which has been growing steadily. I've been involved in it almost from the beginning. It's an effort to do something about how we're teaching the teachers, which is a critical part of the problem. We have such a vast number of teachers, particularly now, more and more, who are the graduates of schools of education, or they have a degree in education. They don't know a subject; they haven't had a real major. They're assigned to teach botany or physics or history, and they don't know anything about the subject.
The federal government is also trying to do some things. Senator Byrd and Lamar Alexander are very much in the forefront of that, along with Senator Kennedy.
I feel strongly that we've got to revise how we teach the teachers. I would abolish schools of education. I think what every teacher ought to have is a good liberal arts education. And there are signs of hope. At the University of Oklahoma, for example, you can no longer graduate with a degree in education; you have to have a major. But there are also terrible setbacks. The state of Alabama has stopped the teaching of history through the first eight grades. State-wide, no more history.
One of the problems with having a teacher that doesn't know the subject he or she is teaching is that they are more dependent therefore on the textbooks, and the textbooks, though there are some exceptions, are appallingly bad. Dreary, deadly it's as if they're designed to kill any interest you might have in history. And you can't love something you don't know any more than you can love someone you don't know. If the teacher doesn't know any history, how is he or she really going to love it? We know from our own experiences that it's the ones that really love what they're teaching that teach you the most.
But I don't think the problem is the teachers, entirely. I think the problem with education in our country is us. We're not doing anywhere near enough as parents or grandparents to talk about history with our children, to talk about the books we've loved about historical subjects or figures. And taking our children or grandchildren to historic sights... we can't leave that for the schools because they don't do it much anymore. Reinstate the dinner table conversation. Reinstate dinner as part of family life. I grew up that way. It's another era, I know, but there's nothing wrong with the idea that you'd talk about history or current events and politics at the dinner table. Every night. Go with your children to Fort Necessity or Monticello or someplace like that. They never forget it. It changes their life.
I know from teaching as a visiting professor or guest lecturer at universities for more than twenty years now that what our students don't know about American history is absolutely appalling. It's stunning. It leaves you gaping when you first encounter it. You think, How can this be? But it's correctable.
That's an awful long answer, but I do care about this passionately.
--Richard Werther '79