“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both
…but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom.”—The Ghost of Christmas Present, in Charles Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol.”
The great author could easily have been writing about current-day politics. The seemingly bridgeless divide between the radical left and just about everyone else is due to the reality that so many “Progressives” have a profound lack of interest in, or have never learned, the lessons of history, civics, and economics.
Jarrett Stepman, writing in The Daily Signal notes that “America is suffering through a crisis in education, especially when it comes to history…Many were horrified when a poll, released in April, showed that two-thirds of millennials don’t know what Auschwitz is, despite the fact that it was the most notorious Nazi death camp in World War II.”
It’s not just The Second World War that has been ignored by the generally-used curricula. Joseph Klein, writing for Newsmax, reports that “the high school curricula increasingly in use today contributes to… students’ ignorance of basic American history and civics. Instead, students are often exposed in these areas of study to principally the leftist perspective. Bad education is contributing to the dumbing down of America. This phenomenon is evidenced by a survey conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, which found that only ‘a quarter of Americans can name all three branches of government.’ Nearly a third of those surveyed could not even name one branch…Hate merchants thrive on such people, whose intense emotions replace logic and fact-based analysis and can be easily manipulated. The left has been particularly adept at peddling false histories in our schools…”
The ignorance is not the fault of individual teachers. It is the specific and intentional result of a curriculum designed to portray a negative image of America. The New York Post’s Karol Markowicz wrote that “’Don’t know much about history . . .,’ goes the famous song. It’s an apt motto for the Common Core’s elementary school curriculum…A 2012 story in Perspectives on History magazine by University of North Carolina professor Bruce Van Sledright found that 88 percent of elementary school teachers considered teaching history a low priority… Van Sledright also found that teachers just didn’t know enough history to teach it. He wrote there was some ‘holiday curriculum as history instruction,’ but that was it.”
A Blaze commentary reported that George Washington University decided that even history majors did not have to take any courses in American History. And, in 2015, ABC’s KSFY affiliate reported that “the South Dakota Board of Education approved new guidelines that do not require high schools to teach U.S. history.” A Nations Report Card study found that only 18% of eighth grade students are proficient in U.S. history.
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Increasingly, ignorance has become commonplace in politics. Consider the case of Ms. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who won an upset primary victory for a NYC Congressional district. The New York Times called her “charismatic and rousing.” She has expressed her belief that America wasn’t founded as a capitalist nation. She has professed ignorance about Middle Eastern politics, but has described Israel as “occupying” Palestine. She believes that “Unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs.” She has stated that the Pentagon didn’t want the recent budget that they diligently sought. When Ben Shapiro offered to debate her on these and other points, she described the invitation as being akin to sexual harassment.
The trouble is, the young and inexperienced lady is hardly alone. The entire Obama foreign policy, for example, was based on wholly incorrect assumptions about Middle Eastern affairs, a stunning ignorance of great power politics, and a shockingly naïve attitude towards economics, a reality noted even by some of his former supporters.
Ignorance flourishes when the media refuses to expose it. Since most of the media tilts sharply left, the uninformed views and policies of individuals such as Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders and, yes, Barack Obama are swept under the rug. Remember when President Obama said he had travelled to 57 of the 59 states? Don’t feel bad if you don’t. Coverage of that gaffe, which would have replayed endlessly if Donald Trump had said it, was, at most, minimal.
Ignorance in government is truly dangerous and harmful, and it is getting more widespread.
Illustration: Pixabay