Historian Claims Civics Education is Failing Because People Are ‘Embarrassed’ by Patriotism
“For about fifty years now, though, students have learned that enduring change comes only through social movements, through demonstrations, civil disobedience, even violence”
This makes a lot of sense. When it comes to America’s history, all we hear coming out of academia these days is negativity.
The College Fix reports:
‘Embarrassed’ by patriotism: Scholars explain why civics education is failing
Reacting to recent data on many students’ ignorance of U.S. history, scholars pointed to the shortcomings of education from grade school through college.
Historian and Hillsdale College Professor Wilfred McClay told The College Fix in an email that history is taught in a distorted way. Teachers and professors over-emphasize America’s shortcomings without due regard for the nation’s founders and institutions.
“We are embarrassed by the very idea of patriotism,” McClay said. “[We] have ceased to believe that love of one’s country, of what is one’s own, and gratitude for the forbears who made our present prosperity and freedom possible, is something that formal education should be inculcating and reinforcing.”
Only 13 percent of eighth-graders in public school scored proficient or above in U.S. history on the 2022 National Assessment for Education Progress, according to data released by the National Center of Educational Statistics earlier this month. The average history score dropped from 263 in 2018 to 258, continuing a downward trend that began after 2014.
“[College] students themselves know that they do not know as much as they should,” McClay said. “We don’t need the dismal decline of NAEP scores to ratify what is obvious.”
Students must understand historical context and the need for strong and healthy “republican institutions,” said McClay [pictured].
“For about fifty years now, though, students have learned that enduring change comes only through social movements, through demonstrations, civil disobedience, even violence,” he said. “We have lost the ability to use our representative institutions as places of debate and deliberation. We must regain that ability.”
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Comments
“Because People Are ‘Embarrassed’ by Patriotism”
How can anyone be surprised? The fedguv and the MSM have made deliberately and consistently turned the terms patriot, white, conservative, Christian, and all the rest, into blanket defamations.
McClay is a great historian-his one volume history of the US is a must read