Jon Peede believes ignorance of American history and culture have reached a crisis point, and the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities has public opinion polls to back up his concern.
- Fifty-nine percent of college graduates think Thomas Jefferson, not James Madison, was the “father” of the Constitution.
- Forty percent of college graduates do not know that Congress has the power to declare war.
- Twenty-nine percent of likely voters would support a constitutional amendment to give the United Nations the authority to reverse U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
Peede shared those disconcerting figures and what he believes to be the cause behind them in a talk Tuesday to the Greenwood Rotary Club. The Mississippi native is a scholar and editor who served during the Trump administration as head of NEH. He has since moved to Greenwood and is a visiting writer in residence at Mississippi Valley State University.
MVSU, he said, has not been infiltrated by the movement in higher education that considers some subjects and some of America’s most notable authors as either taboo or unimportant.
He cited a survey by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which found that only 18% of U.S. colleges and universities now require students to take at least one course in U.S. history or government to earn a bachelor’s degree. Equally troubling, he said, is that many universities discourage the presentation of viewpoints that run counter to their campus’ prevailing ideological bent.
As a result, students at these schools are being cheated out of a comprehensive education and the American tradition that promoted the free exchange of ideas.
“If a college student never hears an intelligently stated position that she disagrees with, then her tuition payments have been squandered,” Peede said. “Indeed a university cannot lack ideological diversity and call itself diverse.”
Although conservatives have been complaining for years about the liberal bias on American campuses, Peede said the movement to restrict the ideas to which students are exposed crosses ideological lines. He cited an example from his own field of literature.
Mark Twain’s novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” which Peede was taught was an attack on racism, is now being deemed harmful by professors on the left because of the racially charged language contained in the 19th century classic. “Not to be outdone,” Peede said, “the political right has gone after Toni Morrison, particularly her novel ‘Beloved’” — the Pulitzer Prize-winning story of a family of formerly enslaved people whose home is haunted by a malevolent spirit.
Peede believes the answer to the problem is a greater emphasis on civics education, starting in the elementary and secondary schools. As NEH chairman, he steered funding toward the creation of the Educating for American Democracy initiative, whose goal is to strengthen the teaching of history and civics in U.S. classrooms. He said he is now working with the Common Sense Society in Washington and other organizations “that are devoting considerable resources to promoting a deeper understanding of American history and culture and to advancing knowledge of our core principles of government.”
He acknowledges that individuals can be happy and successful without knowing their nation’s history or its foundational cornerstones, but he doesn’t know that American society can survive when such ignorance becomes widespread.
He said that “a less informed individual here and there soon becomes a group, and a group soon becomes a mass, and a mass becomes a movement. And a movement of Americans divorced from the foundations of America ultimately will not care about continuing the American experiment.”
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
