Ignorance of U.S. history called threat to security
David McCullough
Widespread ignorance of American history among students and teachers at high schools and colleges is a major threat to the nation's security, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author David McCullough told a Senate panel yesterday.
"We are raising a generation of people who are historically illiterate" and ignorant of the basic philosophical foundations of our constitutional free society, the past president of the Society of American Historians said.
"We can't function in a society if we don't know who we are and where we came from," Mr. McCullough told a special hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. The panel is chaired by Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee Republican.
Mr. McCullough said a group of high school students was asked if they could name the American Revolutionary War commanding general at Yorktown when British Gen. Charles Cornwallis...