Don't Know Much

Don't Know Much 'bout History

Wall Street Journal

When Sam Cooke recorded that line back in 1960, it was part of a love song. But if Bruce Cole of the National Endowment for the Humanities is right, it could be our epitaph.

According to a recent survey of America's most elite universities, nearly all college seniors could identify Beavis and Butthead but 40% could not place the Civil War in the right half-century. A national history test of high-school seniors found a majority of them identifying Germany, Italy or Japan as a U.S. ally in World War II. Still another survey of Americans at large found a third attributing the line "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" to the Constitution rather than Karl Marx.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that the NEH is making a little history of its own via its "We the People" initiative (www.wethepeople.gov). This Tuesday prize-winning historian Robert V. Remini will add some oomph when he talks about the Founding Fathers in what will be an annual "Heroes of History" lecture in Washington. That same night the NEH will announce the six winners of a national contest for the best essays from high-school juniors on "The Idea of America."

Now it's easy to wax platitudinous about the import of history. And it's tempting to indulge in cynicism about the future of self-government when so many of our young voters suffer from what Mr. Cole calls "American amnesia." But the "We the People" effort strikes us as particularly well-timed, coming at a moment when people are eager to rediscover the relevance of our past to our present.

So we incline to optimism. In an age when a biography of John Adams can hit the bestseller list and when Warner Bros. -- not PBS -- is about to release a 3?-hour epic on the Civil War ("God and Generals"), there's surely an appetite here. Just look at the impact made by the Concord Review, a journal dedicated to publishing essays of high-school students from around the country; more recently the review announced the formation of an organization to encourage students to establish history clubs. At a moment when not a single Ivy League university makes a course in American history a graduation requirement, this is a bottom-up revolution.

And there's something wonderfully old-fashioned about starting off with an emphasis on the heroic. As Mr. Cole tells us: "Sept. 11 and, more recently, the Columbia disaster have reminded us not only that our heroes come from all walks of life -- but that their stories provide insight and inspiration."

In his First Inaugural Address nearly a century and a half ago, Lincoln invoked "the mystic chords of memory" to inspire a bitterly divided nation to be true to its better self. With America on the eve of war and our sons and daughters now being called to the front lines, surely we cannot expect the often hostile interests abroad ever to comprehend what this American experiment in ordered liberty rests upon unless it is understood first at home.

Tony & Tacky
Tempest in a Tepee: After complaints from unnamed sources involved with the Indian Outreach program at St. Cloud State University, says the St. Cloud (Minn.) Times, students at Technical High School have been forced to change the name of the play "Ten Little Indians." Based on the Agatha Christie murder mystery "And Then There Were None," the play has nothing to do with race, but school principal Roger Ziemann said that the title was ethnically offensive. As one Times reader wrote in an online response: "Give me a break -- I'm Italian and I don't like any reference to the Mafia -- so let's name the Sopranos something else -- how about the Johnson's?? Oh but then anybody named Johnson would be offended."

Sign Language: For years Immaculate Heart of Mary parish in Brooklyn, N.Y., has had a billboard outside its rectory bearing the words "Abortion Stops a Human Heart From Beating." The diocesan newspaper the Tablet has been the only one to report that Father John Costello awoke one morning recently to find a sign saying "Happy 30th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade" pasted over his rectory door -- and about 100 coat hangers strewn about the property. A few weeks ago someone spray-painted "bigot" in red letters over the same sign. Guess some hate crimes are more equal than others.

Updated February 14, 2003