Slowpoke_Rodrigo
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ESSAY
CAN A CULTURE DEPRIVED OF MEMORY GO ON?
WASHINGTON -- As we approach our first Memorial Day of the new millennium, America is losing its national memory. This would be serious enough in any country, but it is deadly for a unique historical entity such as the United States, whose very existence and coherence depend upon the perpetuation of an idea.
As we exhaust ourselves patting our backs over our unprecedented prosperity, we can see the signs and symptoms of national forgetfulness. They are no longer subtle.
Outraged over growing "civics illiteracy," more than 80 educational and public policy groups and officials recently banded together to form the new National Alliance for Civic Education (NACE) to drive civics reform at the state and local levels (this includes such groups as the American Federation of Teachers and the American Political Science Association).
This new effort was the direct result of alarming recent studies and surveys. One this winter by the Roper organization, conducted among top seniors at 55 leading colleges and universities, found that while nearly 100 percent could identify cartoon characters Beavis and Butt-head and the rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg, only 34 percent knew that George Washington was the American general at the battle of Yorktown; only one-third were able to identify the Constitution as establishing the division of powers in the U.S. government; and 81 percent of these "top" students earned a D or an F grade in response to basic historical questions. Indeed, only 25 states now require any civics education in public schools at all.
In one of the best books on this subject, "Cultural Amnesia," social theoretician Stephen Bertman notes that U.S. adults finished last in a nine-nation survey asking respondents to identify regions and countries on an unmarked map of the world. Half didn't know where Central America was, 43 percent couldn't find England on a map of Europe, and 14 percent couldn't even find the United States!
This is the country that the Clinton administration constantly calls the world's "indispensable nation"?
In this self-congratulatory amnesiac haze that we seem to be living in, it is easy for Americans to slough all of this off. But almost without our knowing it, I think we have turned a corner. Those rosy assurances that "everything will be all right," as our dear mothers would assure us as children, just don't wash anymore.
As Henry Kissinger predicts these days, "I think we are heading into a world of great turmoil." This is surely the world that I see, as important areas -- Central Africa, Central Asia, parts of the Andes -- become poisoned centers, spreading anarchy.
In this world, a strong and coherent America that knows what it is historically will be critical. America never was made up of bloodlines, like most countries. It was a nation based upon the common ideas of personal liberty and responsibility, representative government, equal justice before the law, and the idea that mankind can evolve constantly to higher states of prosperity and happiness.
In short, America is based upon ideas! And the knowledge of those ideas is exactly what we are losing.
As Bertman asks: "Can a culture deprived of memory go on? And if national memory loss implies a loss of direction, what will be the consequences for our future as a people and as a civilization? Indeed, can any culture have a viable future if it has lost touch with its past?
"Should a patient exhibit symptoms of confusion and disorientation, a doctor may ask a few standard questions. Do you know where you are? Do you know what day it is? Do you remember what happened before you got here? Do you remember your name? Such questions, when asked of Americans at large, offer disturbing evidence of America on a national scale."
To use a phrase popular in some of the Eastern colleges in the '30s, "Everything correlates." In other words, we historically have been characterized as a nation by the way in which the political, the social, the economic and even the psychological strands in our national weave formed an intricate civic quilt. But our principles and behavior don't correlate today.
It was no accident, but rather symptomatic of this era, that the campaign theme of the Democratic Party in the past two elections was: "It's the economy, stupid!" Because American life has, in far too many areas, narrowed to the economic.
More and more, too, America is becoming a "process nation," a country obsessed with forms while the substance fades away. That should surprise no one. That is what happens when a nation forgets its history -- and it is worst of all when the citizens do this to themselves.
The reasons for the death of history in America are not hard to find. Part of it is due to public culture, part to a wantonness that often takes over peoples at particularly prosperous times. But part of it is also the intellectual fracturing within the history profession as a direct result of the Cold War and of the infiltration of our culture by Marxist and leftist ideologues. Since so many cannot agree on what American history means, they prefer not to teach it at all.
The new NACE coalition of educators can have some effect. But in the end, it is we Americans -- politicians, parents, students -- who will have to turn it around.
------------------
Slowpoke Rodrigo...he pack a gon...
"That which binds us together is infinitely greater than that on which we disagree" - Neal Knox
I'll see you at the TFL End Of Summer Meet!
CAN A CULTURE DEPRIVED OF MEMORY GO ON?
WASHINGTON -- As we approach our first Memorial Day of the new millennium, America is losing its national memory. This would be serious enough in any country, but it is deadly for a unique historical entity such as the United States, whose very existence and coherence depend upon the perpetuation of an idea.
As we exhaust ourselves patting our backs over our unprecedented prosperity, we can see the signs and symptoms of national forgetfulness. They are no longer subtle.
Outraged over growing "civics illiteracy," more than 80 educational and public policy groups and officials recently banded together to form the new National Alliance for Civic Education (NACE) to drive civics reform at the state and local levels (this includes such groups as the American Federation of Teachers and the American Political Science Association).
This new effort was the direct result of alarming recent studies and surveys. One this winter by the Roper organization, conducted among top seniors at 55 leading colleges and universities, found that while nearly 100 percent could identify cartoon characters Beavis and Butt-head and the rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg, only 34 percent knew that George Washington was the American general at the battle of Yorktown; only one-third were able to identify the Constitution as establishing the division of powers in the U.S. government; and 81 percent of these "top" students earned a D or an F grade in response to basic historical questions. Indeed, only 25 states now require any civics education in public schools at all.
In one of the best books on this subject, "Cultural Amnesia," social theoretician Stephen Bertman notes that U.S. adults finished last in a nine-nation survey asking respondents to identify regions and countries on an unmarked map of the world. Half didn't know where Central America was, 43 percent couldn't find England on a map of Europe, and 14 percent couldn't even find the United States!
This is the country that the Clinton administration constantly calls the world's "indispensable nation"?
In this self-congratulatory amnesiac haze that we seem to be living in, it is easy for Americans to slough all of this off. But almost without our knowing it, I think we have turned a corner. Those rosy assurances that "everything will be all right," as our dear mothers would assure us as children, just don't wash anymore.
As Henry Kissinger predicts these days, "I think we are heading into a world of great turmoil." This is surely the world that I see, as important areas -- Central Africa, Central Asia, parts of the Andes -- become poisoned centers, spreading anarchy.
In this world, a strong and coherent America that knows what it is historically will be critical. America never was made up of bloodlines, like most countries. It was a nation based upon the common ideas of personal liberty and responsibility, representative government, equal justice before the law, and the idea that mankind can evolve constantly to higher states of prosperity and happiness.
In short, America is based upon ideas! And the knowledge of those ideas is exactly what we are losing.
As Bertman asks: "Can a culture deprived of memory go on? And if national memory loss implies a loss of direction, what will be the consequences for our future as a people and as a civilization? Indeed, can any culture have a viable future if it has lost touch with its past?
"Should a patient exhibit symptoms of confusion and disorientation, a doctor may ask a few standard questions. Do you know where you are? Do you know what day it is? Do you remember what happened before you got here? Do you remember your name? Such questions, when asked of Americans at large, offer disturbing evidence of America on a national scale."
To use a phrase popular in some of the Eastern colleges in the '30s, "Everything correlates." In other words, we historically have been characterized as a nation by the way in which the political, the social, the economic and even the psychological strands in our national weave formed an intricate civic quilt. But our principles and behavior don't correlate today.
It was no accident, but rather symptomatic of this era, that the campaign theme of the Democratic Party in the past two elections was: "It's the economy, stupid!" Because American life has, in far too many areas, narrowed to the economic.
More and more, too, America is becoming a "process nation," a country obsessed with forms while the substance fades away. That should surprise no one. That is what happens when a nation forgets its history -- and it is worst of all when the citizens do this to themselves.
The reasons for the death of history in America are not hard to find. Part of it is due to public culture, part to a wantonness that often takes over peoples at particularly prosperous times. But part of it is also the intellectual fracturing within the history profession as a direct result of the Cold War and of the infiltration of our culture by Marxist and leftist ideologues. Since so many cannot agree on what American history means, they prefer not to teach it at all.
The new NACE coalition of educators can have some effect. But in the end, it is we Americans -- politicians, parents, students -- who will have to turn it around.
------------------
Slowpoke Rodrigo...he pack a gon...
"That which binds us together is infinitely greater than that on which we disagree" - Neal Knox
I'll see you at the TFL End Of Summer Meet!