COMMENTARY

America's knowledge crisis

David M. Shribman

Three out of five U.S. eighth graders tested in a nationwide survey did not know that the 1803 Marbury vs. Madison case established the Supreme Court’s power to decide whether a federal law is constitutional.

Half of them could not attribute the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident” to the Declaration of Independence. Fewer than half could figure out what time it was in Johannesburg at 10 a.m. in Lima, even when presented with a time-zone map.

The latest Nation’s Report Card on students’ mastery of history, geography, and civics makes for gloomy reading. The (sort of) good news: There hasn’t been much change from four years ago, and there’s small improvement in some demographic groups, particularly among Hispanic students.

The bad news: Only about a third of American eighth graders can correctly separate which presidential powers are set forth in the Constitution from those not specified in the Constitution.

America has many educational challenges, but one of the most serious is the decline in general knowledge, especially history and geography, among students. Whether that can be attributed to the Internet, or increased nonacademic demands on schools and teachers, or the zeal to test, or a decline in rigor in the nation’s classrooms and in the culture more broadly, the general-knowledge deficit is as much of a crisis as the budget deficit, maybe graver.

“To be a good citizen in a democracy, you need to be well informed about history and geography,” says Hunter Rawlings, a classics scholar who is the former president of both the University of Iowa and Cornell University and, since 2011, the president of the Association of American Universities.

“This country depends on an educated citizenry — and those who do not have this kind of knowledge will be voting for people who will make momentous decisions on health care, foreign policy, and the economy,” he says.

“Education is definitely changing, but there’s never been a more important time to incorporate social studies into the curriculum,” says Chasidy White, an eighth grade social-studies teacher in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board.

“We are in a global community and do international business and collaboration. That’s why history is important. That’s why geography is important. Social studies should be driving all the other elements in the curriculum, and in many schools it is not.”

The same, of course, can be said of the arts and, in a nation where juvenile obesity is a growing concern, of old-fashioned gym class. And the same is said about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

All those things are important, but the country was founded on the idea that the people should rule and on the implicit corollary that the people should know what they are talking about — particularly when it comes to political affairs and their historical backgrounds.

Two thoughts: The first is mine, which is that students’ poor performance is not their fault, but ours.

The second comes from the meditations of Marcus Aurelius. “Consider the past,” wrote the man who was emperor of Rome for nearly 20 years in the second century A.D. “Thou mayest forsee also the things which will be.”

Those things may not be clear. But they will be discernible, which is why this knowledge crisis should concern us all.

David Shribman is executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Contact him at: dshribman@post-gazette.com