Teens’ Knowledge of History, Literature Is Very Poor

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Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 3/3/2008 2:05:00 PM

One in five teens have no idea who America's enemy was in World War II, and more than a quarter believe that Columbus embarked on his journey of discovery after 1750. Meanwhile, half don’t know what Senator Joseph McCarthy was investigating or what the Renaissance was.

Those are some disturbing results from a telephone survey of 1,200 U.S. teens that became the basis for a report called "Still at Risk: What Students Don't Know, Even Now." from Common Core, a new advocacy group for liberal arts education.

The significant gaps in students' knowledge of history and literature is alarming because such information, along with math and language skills, is vital for preparing youth for civic responsibilities, advanced education, and the workforce, says the report. Twenty-five years after the first Nation at Risk report highlighted gaps in education, considerable problems remain—and that breeds societal inequities, says study author Frederick Hess. "The first mission of public schooling in a democratic nation is to equip every young person for the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship," Hess writes.

Acquainting students with "the historical narrative and cultural touchstones that mark our national experience," he says, offers "the shared reference points" that allow young Americans and new immigrants alike to find their common identity. This goal is important at a time when 12 percent of the American population is foreign-born and 20 percent of the nation’s students speak a language other than English at home, the report states.

Although the students surveyed scored well on subjects that schools cover exhaustively, such as the significance of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the author of the "I Have a Dream" speech, other findings were a lot less impressive, especially among students who had one parent with a college education.

In the history category, only 43 percent of students surveyed knew that the Civil War was fought "between 1850 and 1900." In the category of literature, a mere 34 percent knew that Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales. Only 46 percent knew that in the Bible Job is known for his tale of woe; and only 38 percent knew that Oedipus is a character in a Greek play who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother.