What Has Happened to Historical Literacy?

By THEODORE K. RABB

Anyone who has taught history to college students for more than 40 years, as I have, has watched a steady decline in the background they bring to the subject. Increasingly, their studies have been geared to contemporary issues like global interactions rather than a sustained immersion in the rich variety of the past.

Why has this happened? To a large degree, it is a byproduct of schools' new commitments -- classes in character education, conflict resolution, or international