Analyzing how schools teach American History has long been a big emphasis for the Dayton based Fordham Foundation. The recent report published by the Foundation — The State Of U.S. History Standards 2011 — states: “We have mounting evidence that American education is creating a generation of students who don’t understand or value our own nation’s history. Dunderheads … one might well conclude, at least in this domain.”

Of all subjects, American students score lowest in American History, with only 20% of students showing proficiency on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP).

The Foundation states: “Historical comprehension is vital if students are to understand their nation and world, and function as responsible, informed citizens,” and, deplorably low history scores, “remind us of the serious shortcomings in how we approach history education in this land. In the vast majority of states, history standards are pitiable and incentives to take this subject seriously are nonexistent.”

Schools are evaluated according to their math and reading scores, but scores in history have no impact on schools’ evaluation.

Fordham published a comprehensive analysis of American History education standards in 2003 and then, just this past February, in 2011. It rated Ohio’s American History curriculum standards a “D” in 2003, and, again, a “D” in 2011. It rated the history standards of only one state, South Carolina, an “A”. The average score for all fifty states was a “D”.

Concerning Ohio, the report states, “There is little American history content or educational rigor in Ohio’s standards. Before eighth grade, there is effectively none. The eighth-grade course offers a bit, attempting to cover the entire period in a handful of broad content statements. The high school course, while marginally more sophisticated, is still exceedingly brief and general; at best, it offers a very basic outline.”

The report quotes noted historian David McCullough: “I don’t think there’s any question whatsoever that the students in our institutions of higher education have less grasp, less understanding, less knowledge of American history than ever before. I think we are raising a generation of young Americans who are, to a very large degree, historically illiterate.”

From the report:

What causes this alarming vacuum of basic historical knowledge? There are multiple explanations, of course, but the most significant is that few states and school systems take U.S. history seriously. So why should students?

Yes, every state requires students to study American history in some form — often in the traditional junior-year U.S. history course — and every state except Rhode Island has mandated at least rudimentary standards for this subject. Yet few hold their schools accountable for teaching the standards or their students accountable for learning the content. In fact, it appears that only thirteen states include any history or social studies as part of a high school exit exam and just eight assess (or will soon assess) social studies or history at both the elementary and high school levels.

This under-emphasis on history in K-12 is compounded by the fact that universities seldom require prowess in history as a condition of entrance and almost never make it a graduation requirement of their own.

Since learning history doesn’t really count, schools devote less and less instructional time to it. One analysis, based on federal data, suggests that elementary schools spend a paltry 7.6 percent of their total instructional time on social studies, of which history is only one part — and often a distressingly small part.

The cover of the Fordham report, "The State Of U.S. History Standards 2011"

A Solon article, “What Democrats can do about Obama,” by Matt Stoller, says the fact that there is no primary challenge, as yet, to President Obama — regardless that “32% of Democratic voters would like to see a primary challenge” — shows there is a big failure of leadership in the party.  He says this failure shows how weak the Democratic Party is as a political organization.

I hope this Solon article will inspire a vigorous discussion in the Democratic Party, because, in my judgment, Democrats Should Dump President Obama And Nominate An Authentic Liberal Candidate.

Stoller is hoping that someone in the party eventually will show some gumption and he hopes the politics of 1892 might serve as a possible model.  In answer to the question, “So what can party leaders do?”, Stoller writes:

In 1892, the Democratic Party nominated Grover Cleveland, and with sweeping majorities in both houses, Democrats had control of the federal government for the first time since before the Civil War. Then a financial crisis, plus Cleveland’s stubborn allegiance to banking interests, turned his presidency into a catastrophe for Democrats.

When taking state candidates into account, the 1894 midterm elections were comparable to the 2010 wipeout; Cleveland was disliked so ardently that party leaders pushed him out of running for reelection. Instead the Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan, who introduced many populist themes into the party and began the ideological transformation that would culminate with the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.

Excerpts from the article:

• On the economy, 71 percent of Americans disapprove of how Obama is doing his job. Even among reliably Democratic groups — union households, women and young people — he’s now unpopular.
• No one, not even the president’s defenders, expect his coming jobs speech to mean anything. When the president spoke during a recent market swoon, the market dropped another 100 points.
• Obama has ruined the Democratic Party. The 2010 wipeout was an electoral catastrophe so bad you’d have to go back to 1894 to find comparable losses. From 2008 to 2010, according to Gallup, the fastest growing demographic party label was former Democrat. Obama took over the party in 2008 with 36 percent of Americans considering themselves Democrats. Within just two years, that number had dropped to 31 percent, which tied a 22-year low.
• The party’s responsibility is to actually choose the nominee best suited to win votes. If Obama looks unlikely to get enough votes to win, he should not get the nomination.
• Obama’s failures have come precisely because he has not listened to Democratic Party voters. Obama continued idiotic wars, bailed out banks, ignored luminaries like Paul Krugman, and generally did whatever he could to repudiate the New Deal.
• This is an institutional crisis for Democrats. …. If the economy worsens going into the fall, and the president continues as he has to attempt to cut Social Security, Democrats might be facing a Carter-Reagan scenario. Reagan, at first considered a lightweight candidate, ended up winning a landslide victory that devastated the Democratic Party in 1980. Carter wasn’t the only loss; many significant liberal senators, such as George McGovern, John Culver and Birch Bayh, fell that year.
• Some organized constituency groups — say some components of the AFL-CIO — would need to announce that their support is up for grabs, based on a clear set of criteria.
• What can change the reality of 2012 is if Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, begins to take his job of representing workers seriously, and one or two establishment Democrats who remember liberalism decide to model courage for the younger generation. Then a robust debate can happen. Only by shaking up the current political order will solutions emerge.
• Obama has basically endorsed every major plank of George Bush’s administration, yet Democrats still grant their approval.
• Political parties need to be flexible enough to allow for new ideas to come into the process, or else third parties or civil disorder are inevitable. All it would take to provide this flexibility are well-known Democratic elders who understand that rank and file Democrats deserve a choice, and a few political insiders who realize that they can increase their own power by encouraging a robust debate. I don’t think this will happen. But just imagine if it did.

George Will, a well paid Mr. Know-It-All, uses an impressive vocabulary, a refined sarcasm — and a bow tie — to project an image of intellectualism as he pushes, over and over, a right wing POV. His comments about global warming show him for the doctrinaire that he is. In his recent column, “Question time for Republicans,” he belittles Republican presidential candidate John Huntsman for saying, “I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”

Will’s response to Huntsman: “Call you sarcastic. In the 1970s, would you have trusted scientists predicting calamity from global cooling? Are scientists a cohort without a sociology — uniquely homogenous and unanimous, without factions or interests and impervious to peer pressures or the agendas of funding agencies? Are the hundreds of scientists who are skeptical that human activities are increasing global temperatures not really scientists?”

A quick Google search shows that Will has been making outlandish statements about global warming for many years and, though he repeatedly has been refuted, and proven to be wrong, he persists in making the same false comments.

The notion that “hundreds of scientists are skeptical” concerning the fact that human activity increasing CO2 is causing global is simply false. If you’re not convinced, spend a little time reading the wealth of information on the web-site “Skeptical Science”

George Will has the brains and personality to be an effective communicator. The question is, why in the world has he chosen to be a “denialist” — someone who employs rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of argument or legitimate debate, when in actuality there is none — why has he chosen to confuse the gullible with a POV that, certainly, with his big brain, he must know is simply wrong?

Interestingly, as if to answer that question, NYT columnist and Nobel prize winner, Paul Krugman, gives an answer in a recent column, “Republicans Against Science.”

Krugman points out the anti-science stands of Republican presidential candidates, and points out their motivation: “According to Public Policy Polling, only 21 percent of Republican voters in Iowa believe in global warming (and only 35 percent believe in evolution). Within the G.O.P., willful ignorance has become a litmus test for candidates.”

Will-ful ignorance. It seems a reasonable conclusion that George Will is spreading nonsense simply to stay in the good graces of his constituency.

Krugman writes, “The scientific consensus about man-made global warming — which includes 97 percent to 98 percent of researchers in the field, according to the National Academy of Sciences — is getting stronger, not weaker, as the evidence for climate change just keeps mounting. In fact, if you follow climate science at all you know that the main development over the past few years has been growing concern that projections of future climate are underestimating the likely amount of warming. Warnings that we may face civilization-threatening temperature change by the end of the century, once considered outlandish, are now coming out of mainstream research groups.”

If this only had to do with the issue of climate change that would be bad enough, but there are hundreds of other issues spokespersons, such as George Will, enrich themselves with by using their big intellects to serve the radical right. And much of the right that Will serves and seeks to please glories in an anti-science POV.

As Krugman says, “The deepening anti-intellectualism of the political right, both within and beyond the G.O.P., extends far beyond the issue of climate change.”