Schools ignore social studies at our peril.

Don’t know much about history

THERE is a growing effort to get rid of the Electoral College, to excise it from the United States Constitution. Sometimes voter turnout doesn’t even top 50 percent in U.S. elections. (Sometimes even in presidential elections.)

Congress runs up the national debt into the trillions—dozens of trillions. Those who warn of inflation are met with blank stares.

Three of the last four presidents never served in the armed services. Those 18-year-olds who will vote this November weren’t alive on Sept. 11, 2001.

Now more than ever, Americans need to be taught their civics and history. Now more than ever, they aren’t getting it. So says another national report card.

With the covid-19 pandemic taking up all the news space lately (and for good reason) you may have missed it: The National Assessment of Educational Progress came out with its national report card last week. Once again, the results weren’t good. Once again, the results for civics and history were dismal.

Eighth-graders were dozens of points away from being just proficient in civics. And they were losing ground in history.

On a scale in which 300 was the high score, eighth-grade American students scored a 153 in civics. On a 1-to500 scale, they scored a 263 in history. Either way, neither score approaches even a gentleman’s C—or a lazy D. Maybe the report card could fall back on the tactful wording of elementary school reports: Needs to show improvement.

And the need is great. Since this is America, parents (and taxpayers) want to know if they’re getting their money’s worth. This country spends a lot on public education. We’d like to think we’re getting a decent return. In all subjects.

Some of us believe that history and civics are every bit as important as math and English. And cringe every time one of the young ones in the house says, “He’s history”—as in, he no longer matters. As in a fired ball coach. History is more important than that, especially in these latitudes. (The past isn’t even past.)

But why worry about it right now? Are civics and history—or what the education types call Social Studies—really priorities right now? Don’t Americans have enough to deal with in 2020?

For an answer to that, a great answer, hear one of the board members of the NAEP. Patrick Kelly is a poli-sci teacher in South Carolina, and says, “In a moment when our society is discussing what government should and can do amid the covid-19 pandemic, we clearly see the value of a strong civics education. Understanding covid-19 within the context of past pandemics like the Spanish Flu speaks to the importance of U.S. history, while learning how and where the virus has spread globally reflects the importance of the study of geography. The circumstances and impact of this pandemic reinforce the critical importance of these subjects to our students’ education.”

Don’t you know it. Depending on your political point of view, the current president of the United States, and commander-in-chief of its armed forces, is either overstepping his constitutional bounds or exercising prudent authority. How know which one if a body (politic) doesn’t know how presidents have used power before? Did the president break any law the several times he denied Congress documents of his administration? And how many voters know this slow dance has been going on since at least 1796, when a president named Washington declined to give another co-equal branch of government documents relating to John Jay’s treaty with the British empire?

As the economy worsens, should tariffs be increased against other countries? And how did that work 90 years ago? (Hint: It didn’t go well, making the Great Depression even greater.)

Speaking of that Spanish Flu 100 years ago, didn’t cities like San Francisco open up after the first wave, only to see a second wave hit, leading to an even deadlier comeback for the sickness?

This information is out there—or in there, if you’re talking about history books. We don’t have to re-learn difficult lessons, not entirely. We can prove educable, without all that pain.

Getting 50 percent at the polls may not be that surprising, given that our kids can barely top 50 percent in these history and civics reports. America, we’ve got to do better. For our own sake.

THERE’S something more at work here than just the usual disagreements between old fogies and the younger crowd. As bad as the covid-19 pandemic is, and may become, it likely won’t produce anything close to the Great Depression. For all too many in today’s mod America, the closer something is to the present, the more important it seems to be.

But the Tea Party in Boston pre-Revolution had a larger impact than the tea party activists of this generation, bless them all. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is more important than anything you’ll find on Twitter tonight. Marbury v. Madison affects most of the country today, no matter the court decision you’ll find on the front page tomorrow.

No, we won’t fight a civil war between the red states and blue states. We’ve tried that. Yes, we will beat the pandemic. We’ve done it before. It’s all a part of our history.

The Netflix generation can get it, too. The rest of us just have to believe it’s important. And act like it.