Why do we teach U.S. history and government to students? The answer is simple: to prepare students for engaged and informed citizenry, the essential ingredient for preserving the American republic. Unfortunately, ACTA’s most recent What Will They Learn?® survey of the core curricula at over 1,100 colleges and universities found that only 18% of institutions require students to take a single course in U.S. history or government. 10 Things Everyone Should Know About American History takes readers through pivotal moments in American history and illustrates the contemporary importance of our past. From our nation’s remarkably unique Founding to America’s victory in the Cold War, Professor Allen C. Guelzo, the senior research scholar in the Council of the Humanities and director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Princeton University, identifies what he deems to be 10 critical moments in United States history.
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 […]
In September 1999, my wife and I traveled to Guangdong province in China to complete the adoption of our daughter. We went out shopping accompanied by our official CPC escort, and gazing at our beautiful new child, I asked our guide if she would help me find a suitable Chinese poster for the nursery wall. […]
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 […]
Every American knows that July 4th marks the day, 243 years ago, that the Continental Congress adopted a declaration asserting independence from British rule. Unfortunately, that’s about all we seem to remember. And every month brings new evidence that Americans don’t know their history, and that, unsurprisingly, colleges and universities aren’t teaching it. When the fireworks and pageantry […]
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