
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, November 3, 1995                   TAG: 9511030075
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IDENTITY CRISIS

AMERICANS may be getting too accustomed to reading news reports about lack of student achievement to get stirred up about yet another on just how little today's schoolchildren are likely to know. They should try to bestir themselves.

This time, the subject is American history - which apparently goes back little further than the computer revolution for a disturbingly large portion of the nation's youth. Citizens of a republic (such as America, kids) best worry about this now rather than later.

Ours is the greatest nation in the world, we believe - made so above all by the freedoms it guarantees to individuals to think, to express ideas, to dissent and to create. These are priceless freedoms, but fragile before the waves of fear, abuse and hatred that wash steadily over a diverse nation.

Without understanding our country's history - its proudest times and its most shameful - how can a new generation of Americans understand the unique gifts and liabilities it inherits? And without this understanding, how can it act wisely to meet its obligations and protect its freedoms for posterity?

Perhaps every generation at middle age looks back in astonishment at the ignorance of the ones coming along behind them. But now a widely respected national test assesses students' progress - and it's telling us the picture is bleaker than we thought. Fifty-seven percent of high school seniors don't have a basic understanding of American history; a mere 1 percent has an advanced understanding.

Less than half the seniors know, for example, that containing communism was the chief goal of U.S. foreign policy after World War II. Doesn't that dampen the celebration a bit?

Some will cry this is proof that public schools have strayed too far from teaching "just the facts, ma'am." Others will point to the same results as evidence that simple memorization of names, dates and historical facts does not impart an understanding of history.

We tend to side with the latter view. But even just the facts apparently would be more, for many young people, than what they've picked up in school.

by CNB