Historically Ignorant: Raising Generations Separated from History

Last month, with Martin Luther King Jr. Day fast approaching, and on its heels the inauguration of Barack Obama, the United States' first African American President, I decided to sponsor a contest in my class that would (hopefully) broaden my students' knowledge of the Civil Rights Movement and its impact on the current political climate. While my students are only in 6th grade, I had hoped that they would at least have a general knowledge of why we celebrate King's life, other than just as an excuse to take a day off from school.

The unfortunate truth is, I was greeted with looks of utter bewilderment as I explained to them what I wanted them to do and it dawned on me that perhaps the time has finally come when we have raised a generation that is largely ignorant of its own history.

In the past few years we have seen many current events being broadly compared to those of the not so recent past. It has been more than thirty years since the end of the Vietnam War, since the assassination of both Kennedys, since the Civil Rights Movement, and since the first lunar landing. We live in a world where every household has at least one color television, kids listen to MP3s on their IPods, and you can record television shows on your TiVo using your cell phone. When the war in Iraq began gathering momentum, many media outlets began labeling it "this generation's Vietnam", but it seems the comparison was lost on a substantial portion of the population. Later, when Barack Obama launched his presidential campaign, posters and t-shirts showed Obama in the company of iconic images of MLK and Bobby Kennedy, prompting much head scratching and the repeated question of, "Who are those guys?" Our technologically advanced society was completely lost when it came to identifying some of history's most influential players.

As a teacher I find it frustrating that my students, at the age of 12, know more about the Middle East than they do about their own country. They can no longer name all the presidents and they can't even tell you how many World Wars there have been. They believe that Pearl Harbor is a love story starring Ben Affleck and that Hitler was just "some mean German guy". When quizzed about Rosa Parks, the best they could give me was, "Oh yeah! That bus lady!"

High stakes testing plays a big part in what our students are now failing to learn. Standardized tests are created by groups of educators and business professionals in an effort to produce future employees who will be well prepared for the jobs they will eventually fill. In Massachusetts the curriculum is finely detailed for each grade and each subject, but students don't begin learning about the United States until they are in 8th grade. There is no longer time in the classroom for students to memorize state capitals and learn about the Thirteen Colonies because school systems are struggling to "teach to the test" and make sure that students are prepared to take the MCAS in order to graduate. No longer are our schools producing students who are historically and politically aware. Nor are we producing students who are familiar with the great works of literature produced throughout the last century. We are simply churning out students who can quickly and easily pass a standardized test in which they choose from a list of answers chosen by others, to questions formed by others who feel they know what each child should know by the time he or she graduates.

In the wake of a new era both politically and socially with the election of Barack Obama, many teachers are questioning whether or not any of these aspects of our nation's system of education will change. It becomes imperative now to continue to teach our children about the Civil Rights Movement because as of this year, there will never again be a generation that knows a United States without an African American president. Our country has seen the culmination of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream, but what satsifaction will there be for those who fought, if the fight itself is forgotten in our schools and in our collective history. Will Barack Obama bring that change to office with him? Or will the fight for equality be lost in the annals of history?