When President Obama was inaugurated in January, popular sentiment –
witnessed by the massive crowd attending the event – held that the United
States was marking a moment of great historical significance.
The
sentiment was well-justified. Obama became the first African American president
of a nation that for much of its history had countenanced the injustices of
slavery and then segregation.
Even
the setting of Obama’s inauguration carried powerful symbolism. Four and a half
decades after the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., looked out from the Lincoln
Memorial toward the U.S. Capitol and dreamed that his children would someday be
judged by the content of their character not the color of their skin, Barack
Obama looked back from the Capitol toward the Memorial and took an oath to
defend our Constitution because voters had freely judged him the best person to
serve as president.
Yet,
if most Americans sensed Obama’s inauguration was an historic step toward the
dream Dr. King expressed in 1963, a recent survey suggests that at the same
time many Americans also have limited understanding of the constitutional role
Obama now fills and of the long struggle for equal justice that preceded Dr.
King’s March on Washington.
Last
spring, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute gave a random sample of 2,508
Americans a 33-question exam on American history, politics, international
relations and market economics. The exam tested basic civic knowledge, with
many questions drawn from U.S. government naturalization exams and National
Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests for high school seniors.
Seventy-one
percent failed the exam and the average score was only 49 percent.
Fifty-one
percent could not even name all three branches of government – the executive,
the legislative and the judicial. Knowing a branch existed, moreover, was no
guarantee a person would understand its constitutional function.
Only
53 percent, for example, knew the Constitution gives Congress the power to
declare war. Nearly 40 percent falsely believed the president has that power.
Similarly,
only 55 percent knew Congress shares foreign-policy power with the president.
Twenty-four percent falsely believed Congress shares that power with the United
Nations.
The
survey also showed that primary and secondary schools do a better job of
teaching students about 20th century American history than they do
teaching students about earlier eras. While the data indicated that a college
education marginally increased student knowledge of pre-20th century U.S.
history, the typical college graduate still failed the overall test – scoring
an average of 57 percent – and still exhibited woeful ignorance of basic U.S.
history.
In
fact, the magnificent setting of the inauguration is also an apt metaphor for
the receding memory of our national heritage.
Americans
watching the event on TV saw the spectacular vista looking out from the Capitol
and could see the steps of the Memorial where Dr. King gave his “I Have a Dream
Speech.” But they could not see into the Memorial itself to the words carved on
the wall there.
Eighty-one
percent of the Americans surveyed by ISI correctly said the theme of the speech
Dr. King delivered at the Memorial expressed his hopes for racial justice and
brotherhood. Seventy percent of Americans who lack a high school diploma
answered this correctly as did 85 percent of those who ended their formal
education with a bachelor’s degree.
But
when asked to name the source of the phrase “government of the people, by the
people, for the people,” only 21 percent of the Americans surveyed knew it came
from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Only 13 percent of those who lack a high
school diploma answered this correctly and only 24 percent of those who ended
their education with a bachelor’s degree.
Americans
did no better when asked the main issue in the 1858 debates between Abraham
Lincoln and Stephen Douglas—a question borrowed from the NAEP U.S. history test
for high school seniors. Only 20 percent answered correctly that it was whether
slavery should be allowed to expand into new territories. Only 16 percent of
those who lack a high school diploma got this right, and only 24 percent of
those who ended their education with a bachelor’s degree.
To
fully appreciate the historic nature of President Obama’s inauguration, a
student would need to know the basics about both President Lincoln and Dr. King
– and the roles these two great Americans played in the long struggle for equal
justice under law.
Because
American schools do such an excellent job – as they should – at teaching
students about Dr. King, it should be reasonable to assume they could also do
an excellent job teaching about Lincoln. School officials simply need to decide
that Lincoln did something important that students need to know about.
Perhaps
that is another way this year’s inauguration can have historical impact..
Editor’s note: Terence P. Jeffrey is a visiting fellow in
Intercollegiate Studies Institute American Civic Literacy Program.
