I want to kick off this discussion with three quotes and a statistic. The first quote is as follows: “The chief purpose [of historical education] is not to fill [someone's] head with a mass of material which he may perhaps put forward again when a college examiner demands its production.” The second—a line from a front page story in The New York Times—reads, “College freshmen throughout the nation reveal a striking ignorance of even the most elementary aspects of United States history.” And the third:
We have descended into what some consider the dark age of declining enrollments, professional unemployment, and a growing rejection of history by many students who seem to agree with Henry Ford that history is “bunk.” If we are going to have any real impact on individuals or society, we must do something besides just cover the material.
Finally, the statistic: in eight years alone, the number of students majoring in history dropped 40 percent.
