To be ignorant of history, wrote Cicero, is to be a child forever. Centuries later, Thomas Jefferson admonished our young republic that freedom and ignorance can never exist together.
American higher education has generally abandoned its obligation to prepare graduates who have the knowledge and understanding to take up meaningful roles in our free society. ACTA is working hard to change that. Only 18% of colleges nationwide require the study of U.S. history or government, while even history major programs have dropped U.S. history requirements.
Our first task is to help the American public and higher education trustees and policymakers understand the extent of the problem. In 1999, ACTA commissioned the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut to survey seniors at the nation’s 55 most prestigious colleges and universities to see if they could answer basic questions on the nation’s history. These questions were typical of a standard high school curriculum, many of them replicating questions from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
The shocking results—81% of these seniors from elite institutions received the equivalent of a “D” or “F”—would soon reverberate through the U.S. Capitol itself. On President’s Day of 2000, ACTA reported the findings in its report, Losing America’s Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century, with the endorsement of historian David McCullough. Congress moved quickly. On June 30 of that year, Concurrent Resolution 129 was introduced by Senator Joseph Lieberman on behalf of Senators Gorton, Smith, Cleland, Byrd, Conrad, Bennett, and Grams, and was unanimously adopted. It referenced ACTA’s survey. The Concurrent Resolution called for boards of trustees and college administrators, as well as state officials responsible for public higher education, to review their standards and add requirements for the study of United States history.
ACTA continues to monitor the state of historical knowledge among college students. The What Will They Learn?® project, which annually evaluates the core curriculum at over 1,100 colleges and universities, indicates which schools require U.S. government or history and which do not.
In 2016, we published No U.S. History? How College History Departments Leave the United States out of the Major, revealing that less than one-third of the nation’s leading colleges and universities require students pursuing a degree in history to take a single course in American history.
ACTA has surveyed civic knowledge for over two decades and found that our colleges and universities have done a poor job of ensuring the civic literacy on which our nation depends. Our 2016 report A Crisis in Civic Education revealed that a majority of the four-year college graduates answering a multiple-choice survey were unable to identify the method for amending the Constitution or the process for presidential impeachment.
Nearly half of respondents failed to identify the correct term lengths for the houses of Congress. Ten percent thought that Judith Sheindlin—”Judge Judy”—is on the Supreme Court.
In 2008, ACTA coordinated the publication and release of E Pluribus Unum, a report by The Bradley Project designed to start a conversation about America’s national identity. In 2012, ACTA testified before Congress, endorsing the restoration of a day of commemoration on George Washington’s actual birthday. Through op-eds and newspaper opinion pieces, ACTA reminds the public of all that our nation loses if it forgets its past. We are in constant contact with trustees, making them aware of the need for a general education requirement that ensures all students have a basic understanding of this nation and its free institutions.
Just as July 4th celebrations are set to begin, ACTA’s new report, No U.S. History? How College History Departments Leave the United States out of the Major, reveals that less than 1/3 of the nations leading colleges and universities require students pursuing a degree in history to take a single course in American history. Only 23 […]
The Founders admonished that informed, engaged citizens would be the indispensable guardian of our liberty. ACTA’s surveys, however, administered over the past two decades, reveal that our schools—and especially our colleges and universities—have done a poor job of ensuring the civic literacy on which our nation depends. Too many institutions fail to require courses that […]
In this 11th edition of its flagship annual survey of college general education curricula, What Will They Learn?, ACTA shines a light on the wide disparity in academic standards at institutions of higher learning across the country. What Will They Learn? reviews the core curricula of over 1,100 four-year public and private institutions to determine the […]
Is the study of history becoming, well, history? According to Benjamin Schmidt of Northeastern University, the number of bachelor’s degrees granted in history declined from 34,642 in 2008 to 24,266 in 2017 even as other majors, such as computer science and engineering, have seen rising enrollments. Today, fewer than 2 percent of male undergraduates and fewer than […]
They’re only off by one word—and 86 years. A new poll by a higher education advocacy group found that 18% of American adults believe Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was behind the New Deal, the package of government interventions President Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced in 1933. The freshman congresswoman representing Queens and the Bronx is in fact the primary House […]
A recent article in “The Federalist” underscored a disturbing educational trend: Students are increasingly ignorant about U.S. history. The sobering statistics disclosed include: • 24 percent of Americans older than 18 visited a historic site in 2012 – a 13 percent drop from 1982. • Only 20.5 percent of Americans between ages 18 and 24 visited […]
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