The State of History in 2012

via The Federalist Papers
The author of this article claims:

“The people who aspire to hold the highest office of our land actually know very little about the history of this nation, let alone the rest of the world. If anything, this is a terrible indictment of our education system, from elementary schools to the institutions of higher learning, including even the most elite universities. It’s possible now to have 16-to-20 years’ worth of education and not come away with even a cursory grasp of history that actually matters”.

Do you agree or disagree with this conclusion and what do you think it means for the future of our country?

By Samuel Chi

Editor’s note: In advance of President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, RCP is rolling out daily “state of” reports to better frame the issues facing the nation. Today: The state of American history.
Over the Christmas holiday I took my family to Pearl Harbor, shortly after the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack that plunged the United States into World War II. I figured that my daughter, now 6 and in first grade, should be old enough to get an up-close and personal experience with this key chapter in world history.

But I was soon consumed by a horrifying event.

While waiting for the boat to take us across the channel to the USS Arizona Memorial, I overheard a group of college students discussing history. Unable to help myself, I lingered to eavesdrop. And this is the gist of what I heard:

“The World War II [sic] started with a bunch of countries on one side and a bunch of countries on the other side,” a young man began, his companions listening with rapt attention as if it were a lecture, “and we didn’t know which side we wanted to be on and we had a hard time picking sides. But when the Japanese attacked us, that made it easy to go against their side.”

I didn’t know whether I should be enraged at or take pity on the young man’s ignorance. But what was most troubling was that he was the one dispensing “knowledge”! The others — judging by the fact that no one disputed or challenged his account — knew less than he did, even after apparently 12 years of compulsory education.

But suddenly I remembered that President Obama, born and raised in Hawaii, once mentioned that had been dropped on Pearl Harbor (in the fashion of Hiroshima) … then it all made sense.

We’re now a country led by a man who thought JFK talked Khrushchev out of the Cuban missile crisis (he didn’t); claimed that our country built the “Intercontinental Railroad” (must be from New York to Paris); and bragged that his uncle liberated Auschwitz (was he in the Soviet Red Army?).