In the news the other day was a study that I simply could not believe.
Two-thirds of young people surveyed did not know what Auschwitz was; 41 percent of all Americans as a whole failed that question, too. Eleven percent of Americans and 22 percent of young people didn’t know what the Holocaust was.
This is all according to a survey conducted by Claims Conference, which also reported the following: “There were over 40,000 camps and ghettos during the Holocaust. Forty-nine percent of millennials cannot name a single one.”
It isn’t just the Holocaust. Other studies have shown an overall lack of knowledge of history. As reported in a 2015 story onSmithsonian.com, a student group went around their college campus in Texas and asked three questions: “Who won the Civil War?” and “Who is the vice president?” and “Who did we gain our independence from?”
Sadly, there weren’t many correct answers.
In an informal office study I conducted on unsuspecting co-workers throughout The Era building, here’s what I got: Six answered all three questions correctly, two weren’t sure; one got one wrong and two right. And I got a lot of strange looks.
Years ago, I was lucky enough to go to Walt Disney World with my family. My daughter was about 10 at the time. We went in the Hall of Presidents, which, if you’ve never been there, is a large (air-conditioned – yay!) theater at Magic Kingdom with animatronic statutes of American presidents. There’s a movie that plays, and then the presidents are introduced.
As the introductions were happening, my brother and I were leaning over to tell my daughter little tidbits about each president — Grover Cleveland was president twice, but not in a row; Calvin Coolidge was known as Silent Cal; William Howard Taft was the heaviest president; James Buchanan, the only president from Pennsylvania, was single; Theodore Roosevelt was once shot on his way to a speech, but gave his speech anyway.
How did we know these things? We all had history class with Mr. Bob Longnecker at Otto-Eldred High School. He was a tough teacher, but students couldn’t help but learn from his passion for history.
His classroom had pictures on the wall of each of the presidents in order. It wasn’t enough that people knew Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.
What did James K. Polk do in office? Chances are good that most people don’t know. If you had Mr. Longnecker, you’d know that Polk settled a boundary dispute with the British that secured the Oregon Territory for the United States. And he led the nation into the Mexican-American War from 1846 to 1848 (sorry, Mr. Longnecker, I had to look up the dates).
My mother-in-law, the late Pat Schellhammer, was a longtime maternity and obstetrics nurse at Bradford Regional Medical Center. She had taught childbirth and siblings classes at the hospital for expectant parents.
I remember her telling me that her “go-to” joke fell flat, and that’s when she started to consider retirement. She used to tell parents that Lewis and Clark went west with fewer items than new parents would take to grandma’s house. For years, her comment would draw laughter.
Yet when schools started having their funding dependant on standardized tests and had to teach to the tests rather than being able to give a well-rounded education, history classes took a back seat.
And young, expectant parents didn’t get Pat’s joke about Lewis and Clark.
George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Let’s hope that’s not the case.
(Schellhammer is the Era’s associate editor. She can be reached at marcie@bradfordera.com)
