Last monday marked Veteran's day in the United States. On Veterans' Day, we are meant to reflect on the accomplishments and sacrifices of those who have fought for our country.

A significant number of Americans, however, paid no attention. Many did not think, even for a moment, about those Americans who fought at Gettysberg, Normandy, Anzio, or the Philippines. Still fewer would have been thinking about the contributions of those who served in the forces of allied nations--the RAF fighter pilots who saved the world in its darkest hours, or the men and women of the French Resistance. They won't be reflecting on these things because they don't know anything about them.

The state of historical education in this country is a national disgrace, as indicated many times by survey research. One recent survey even showed, amongst other things, that 52 percent of High School seniors thought that one of the axis powers – Germany, Italy or Japan – was a U.S. ally in World War II.

Anecdotal evidence confirms the same dismal picture. Dr. Thomas Reeves recently wrote of his experiences teaching at University of Wisconsin-Parkside. To quote Dr. Reeves: "One quickly learns that the young people signed up for 101 and 102 (the chronological break between the courses at Parkside is 1877) know virtually nothing about the history of their own nation. They have no grasp of colonial America...or the nation's constitutional machinery. Even after instruction, they often confuse World War I and World War II." (emphasis added) (Quote is from Kimberly Swygert.)

To be fair, UW-Parkside is not a selective school. But all of these students are presumably High School graduates. Aren't the subjects mentioned all things that a tenth grader should have some familiarity with? And don't delude yourself that those who missed it in high school will pick it up in college. Those following a professional curriculum may take little or no history; those pursuing the humanities will likely study history only as imaged through the lens of postmodernism and other highly theoretical constructs.

These things matter. How can a person who confuses WWI and WWII, or who thinks the U.S. and Germany were allies in the latter, possibly follow a debate about the relevance of many things going on in the Middle East today? Extreme absence of historical knowledge makes effective citizenship impossible.

And there is a more subtle factor at work here, also. To understand the sacrifices and accomplishments of those who came before tends to give a person a bit of humility. The absence of such understanding encourages a certain kind of arrogance--"self-esteem" of the worst kind.

C. S. Lewis wrote that if you want to destroy an infantry unit, you cut it off from its adjoining units; if you want to destroy a generation, you cut it off from knowledge about previous generations. Were this the objective of our educational establishment, they would be doing a pretty good job of it.

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David Foster is the publisher of the Photon Courier.