It's not clear why the students did poorly, but several reasons suggest themselves. In several cases professors favored ideological interpretations that distort historical facts, or diverted students from the courses that would deepen an understanding of American history. The nation's flaws are emphasized in many courses, and taught as reasons to dismiss the nation's successful attempts to put things right.
In "Choosing the Right College," a guide to the American colleges that still provide the old-fashioned "liberal" education that today is properly called "conservative," John Zmirak offers clues to the problems exacerbated by tenured radical professors who focus angrily only on what's wrong with America, the founding fathers and their own fathers. "Like spoiled heirs who despise the family business that funds their leisure," he writes, "contemporary professors indulge in Oedipal ideologies that focus on killing, over and over and over again, our fathers."
Despite the respect and responsibility that we now extend to college-age students, we've forgotten their unripe vulnerability. No matter how smart they may seem, they're particularly open to uncritical acceptance of the notions of radical rebellion that dominate most college campuses on the left. Tradition is denigrated and dismissed before it's explored or understood.
But lest we smugly sneer at college seniors for what they don't know, we should see how we answer these questions ourselves: Where does the phrase the "wall of separation" between church and state appear? What Supreme Court decision ended legal racial segregation in the United States? Why were the Federalist Papers written? What is federalism? What is the Monroe Doctrine? What is meant by a "progressive" tax?
The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Connecticut's department of public policy and was aptly titled, "Failing Our Students, Failing America." Thomas Jefferson knew that education was essential for the republic to remain strong. He wrote that the purpose of education was to "enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom." That was crucial in his 18th century, and it's crucial in our own 21st. We forget at our peril.