Most Americans do not know which countries the United States fought against in World War II or when the US Constitution was ratified. Good luck if they point to Ukraine on a map let alone Belarus. Watch them stare blankly when you ask who represents them in the state legislature or what rights are protected by the First Amendment.

There is nothing particularly new about this. As early as April 4, 1943, the New York Times reported on its front page that college freshmen across the country displayed “a striking ignorance of even the most basic aspects of United States history.” Among other things, the newspaper reported that only 6% could name the 13 original states.

But the situation seems to be getting worse, not better. Between 2012 and 2019, the number of history students at colleges nationwide dropped by about a third. Earlier this month

3RD OF MAY

,

the U.S. Department of Education reported a substantial decline in younger students’ knowledge of American history as well as a less significant but still worrying decline in civics knowledge.

Only 13% of eighth graders were deemed proficient in history, based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, an exam also known as the U.S. Report Card. Only 22% were found to be proficient in civics.

Its a national concern, said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the US Department of Education. Too many of our students struggle to understand and explain the importance of civic participation, how the U.S. government works, and the historical significance of events.

Some people think it doesn’t matter. They believe

civics is unnecessary and history is just an ivory tower topic for stubborn policy makers and watched academics. What our children need in high school and college, they say, are certainly not abstract lessons in arcane facts, but skills that will put them on the path to jobs and productivity. Let’s hear it for the accounting! computer technology! Nursing! Supply chain management! This is where education is going, isn’t it?

I sincerely hope not. History is important, as is an understanding of our government and how it works. Especially in times like these. We are an increasingly polarized country in an increasingly globalized world and only with informed and engaged citizens can a democracy like ours function.

Of course, Americans can be forgiven for raising their hands in frustration as history, civics, and social studies have become weaponized in the culture wars, with selfish politicians trying to control what our children learn.

President Trump was the worst and, unsurprisingly, the most reductive of the offenders. As president, he created

a

the commission of 1776

to fight the radicals and socialists he says dominate our schools. Our children, he said, are dealing with a twisted web of lies about the United States in which the men and women who built it were not heroes, but villains. He wants schools to teach the magnificent truth about our country.

That’s not history; that’s propaganda.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, for his part, apparently hopes to win the Republican primary by provoking and amplifying divisions in culture wars. That’s why he signed several anti-awakening bills that ban the teaching of gender identity and sexual orientation and prohibit lessons that could make people of a certain race read: white people feel guilty or uncomfortable for past actions by members of their race undertaken.

That’s not history; that’s political.

Conservatives, meanwhile, are complaining that it’s the

left

that brings his bias to K-12 schools and colleges. A favorite example is the proposed draft California ethnic studies curriculum that she and others viewed as narrowly ideological.

jargon filled,

anti-capitalist and generally politicized. (It has since been rewritten.)

But regardless of who’s to blame, here’s the bottom line: Teachers shouldn’t indoctrinate students in their classrooms with the politics of

each

single-sided right, left or center.

Students

must learn through discussion and debate, encountering conflicting interpretations and competing perspectives that challenge their preconceived views.

Was Thomas Jefferson a great democratic innovator and statesman, even though he was a slave owner, and can those ideas be reconciled? Is the United States the largest and most robust democracy in the world or is democracy here dependent on life?

Why do we have so many statues to Confederate General Robert E. Lee when the South lost the Civil War? Do the First and Second World Wars advocate isolationism or involvement?

Why did we send hundreds of thousands of troops to obscure Vietnam over a decade?

Since the founding of the country, who has been more effective: reformers or radicals? Were the Black Panthers heroic freedom fighters or armed extremists?

In any case, let students get acquainted with the work of legitimate

conservative historians, liberal historians and radical historians. Revisionists and Counter-Revisionists. Boosters and critics.

With what purpose? Not to convince them that one point of view is right (or to bombard them with mind numbing facts), but to teach them the critical thinking skills that will help them work their way to their own well-considered conclusions. To help them reject simplistic ideology-driven blunders in favor of complexity, ambiguity and nuance.

The United States is at a crisis point. Elections are under fire, voting rights are at stake, book bans are expanding, the Supreme Court is losing credibility and a new reckoning is underway over race relations. The country is bitterly divided

C

Limescale change is coming and Americans on all sides are losing faith in government.

Now we need citizens who understand what is happening around them and who have a context and a framework to view the country

i

its principles, its successes and failures, and its place in the world. History and civics sometimes seem abstract and irrelevant, but they matter.

@nick_goldberg