College Kids Without Civics and History

Today’s college aged Americans are probably the first generation in American history that knows less about important consequential things than their parents or grandparents. This was reconfirmed recently in a new study commissioned by the American Council of Trustees and...

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Today’s college aged Americans are probably the first generation in American history that knows less about important consequential things than their parents or grandparents. This was reconfirmed recently in a new study commissioned by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). It hired an organization, College Pulse, that surveyed over 3,000 current American college students from a large number of different schools.

The results show that collegiate Americans today are extremely knowledgeable about relatively trivial matters of transitory interest, but rather clueless about important events, laws, and personalities related to our history and civic institutions.(READ MORE from Richard K. Vedder: Grade Inflation and Campus Protests)

For example, responding to four-answer multiple choice questions, an overwhelming majority know that Jay-Z is married to Beyonce, or that Jeff Bezos is the owner of Amazon (as an Amazon stockholder not related to Bezos, I mildly resent the assertion that Bezos is the owner).  But more importantly, big majorities wrongly asserted who was the President of the U.S. Senate, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, “Father of the U.S. Constitution,” or which branch of government has the power to declare war.

They know a good bit about contemporary business or entertainment icons who will become dim historical memories within a generation, but are abysmally ignorant about key facts contributing to making us the most exceptional nation to ever exist.

To be sure, the survey is not perfect. While in this era of the disappearing male from college campuses, having more than twice the number of females as males in the sample struck me as inappropriate, as did having a rather large number (165) identifying themselves as “non-binary” or apparently not declaring any gender at all (70).

Yet the ACTA survey confirms what earlier surveys, such as a Civic Literacy Test administered by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute show: young college attending Americans have only the foggiest knowledge of their heritage or civic institutions. And the ACTA results are so overwhelming that appropriate tweaking of the sample almost certainly would not hugely change reported outcomes.

Yet one-third of a billion humans are called “Americans” while others living nearby in places like Winnipeg or Mexico City are not. Why? Civic institutions like governments and their constitutional framework, plus the history of the mingling of peoples form the glue that bind hundreds of millions diverse individuals together as “Americans.”

They took people of diverse races, religions, ethnicities, language facility, incomes, etc., and made them into something they have in common — becoming part of a tribe, an extended family. And the knowledge of the creation and current operation of that national framework provides the foundations for national unity and respect, not to mention power and wealth.

On College Campuses

As someone who has been a direct participant in American higher education as student or professor over eight different decades (the 1950s through the 2020s), I have seen the instructional focus on our national identity decline dramatically. Enrollments are down in history departments but up in business and communications, not to mention subjects loved by the Woke Supremacy like gender studies.

And on many campuses, students are asked to apologize for their “white privilege” and other nonsensical concepts with little historical legitimacy. Not only are students made ignorant of their past, they are often being taught in a style reminiscent of the old Soviet Union a factually inaccurate and pernicious secular (indeed, anti-religious) catechism.

Within universities massive government subsidies dilute the operation of market forces, but they do not eliminate them, and the public is now revolting. Some much needed creative destruction is underway, with school closings and a firing of woke college presidents leading to a Counter Reformation.

In Ohio where I live, I think there is a decent chance that like Florida the state government will soon mandate public universities teach some American history and civics to undergraduates. Doggedly traditional and anti-woke schools like Hillsdale and Grove City colleges seem to be surviving, even flourishing. Even amidst falling enrollments, a few new promising traditional schools like Thales College and the University of Austin are emerging as alternatives. (READ MORE: College Football Is About To Change Forever)

There is an arrogance about the contemporary era that causes much malaise. Today’s Americans think everything important burst forth in the last few years or decades, and are dimly aware of the historical foundations of an exceptional nation.

Yet in reality, in 1776, we were a nation of 2.5 million with total annual incomes of a small fraction of that of our smallest state by population today, Wyoming. Tens of millions made the greatest long-distance migration in world history creating today’s United States. It is a marvelous story, one with which every college educated American should have intimate familiarity. Thanks to ACTA for revealing the magnitude of our historical and civic ignorance.

More broadly, the present generation of adults running our nation is diminishing our cultural capital, endangering national unity and future generations. In a similar way, it is debasing our financial capital by engaging in irresponsible federal deficit spending that, along with the precipitous decline in births, likely will lead to severe financial insecurity to the next generation of senior citizens (around 2050). In less than a century, we have moved from the Greatest Generation to the Most Selfish one.

Richard Vedder is Distinguished Professor of Economics Emeritus at Ohio University, and Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute.

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