EDITORIAL – Students’ civic aptitude is history

Do you know why we didn’t have classes yesterday? Or why the post office, banks and federal… Do you know why we didn’t have classes yesterday? Or why the post office, banks and federal government were closed? If you don’t, you’re not the only one.

Yesterday was a national holiday dedicated to the memory of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. While many college students know that he had a dream, they’re not quite clear about what he was actually working toward.

The 14,000 college freshman and seniors polled by the University of Connecticut’s Department of Public Policy for the nonprofit Intercollegiate Studies Institute scored an average of 53.2 percent on the survey that tested civic literacy.

In King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, 81 percent of students surveyed knew that he was hoping for “racial justice and brotherhood,” according to a Washington Post article. Nearly everyone else polled thought King was talking about the abolition of slavery. Scary, isn’t it?

It’s clear that some people are completely slipping through the cracks. The real shocker, however, is that the students who have at least a vague idea of who King was averaged just 53 percent competency in civil aptitude. Ouch.

The No Child Left Behind law isn’t helping, either. The law can’t be blamed for the results of the poll, as the law was only signed into effect in 2001 – far too recently to significantly affect college students. However, its heavy emphasis on reading and writing is forcing social studies and history lessons into the background, according to the Washington Post.

College education isn’t to blame for the results of this poll. Students should have a firm understanding of a wide range of topics like math, reading, science, civics and history before they advance to higher education. The breakdown is occurring in grade school and high school.

Yes, reading and math are extremely important, but to make these two topics the only focus of education in the United States is setting our country’s children up for failure. A strong base in both of these subjects should be established in young students, and their educational spectrum should be broadened as they advance through grade school and high school.

For teachers who find themselves hindered by the unbalanced curriculum encouraged by No Child Left Behind, it’s important to find ways to work lessons like King’s history into the classroom. Students should be familiar with more than his “I Have a Dream” speech. Bring some of his other speeches and letters in as reading assignments. Encourage students to read critically while simultaneously teaching them about history.

Sacrificing science and history isn’t making students smarter – especially if lessons like the significance of Rev. King are left out of the classroom. Learning about history helps us make better decisions in the future. Our academic performance is still far behind several other countries of comparable status, so we can’t help but wonder why we are making these sacrifices.

Scores of 53 percent on civic literacy are absolutely unacceptable. We hope that this poll encourages a retooling of curriculum to include relevant and important information. And whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, here’s one thing many can agree on: There’s nothing more American than learning our own history.