November 24, 2006

Condemned to Repeat It

By JOHN GRAVOIS

A new study sounds the alarm over undergraduates' ignorance of American history. Is it a crisis or a case of crying wolf?

The study's findings were irresistibly damning, even if they did sound vaguely familiar: American colleges, supposedly the nation's hothouses for enlightened citizenship, in fact produce civic nincompoops.

 That was the word in late September from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a Delaware think tank, when it released its study, "The Coming Crisis