A History to Be Proud Of
Lindsey Burke /
In his new book, We Still Hold These Truths, Heritage’s Dr. Matthew Spalding explains that American students lack a fundamental understanding U.S. history. Dr. Spalding writes:
The Department of Education reports that more than half of high school seniors lack even a basic knowledge of American history. Many college students, another study finds, can’t identify the Gettysburg Address and don’t know that James Madison was the father of the Constitution.
…High schools largely ignore, minimize, or disparage the story of America’s Founding in the classroom…We must reverse this course by making a commitment at every level of education to promote an awareness and appreciation of the true principals of the American Founding…The public mission of our schools in the past was to transmit this knowledge to young Americans as the most important requisite for democracy. This must be the mission of our schools again.
That’s exactly the mission that former U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett has taken on.