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Passing FCAT, perhaps, but failing our history tests

By MARTIN DYCKMAN
Published February 27, 2005

TALLAHASSEE - If political candidates had to disclose their SAT scores - who knows, it may come to that - which would you prefer: the math wizard, or the one who excelled in American history?

That was a trick question. There are SATs in history, but they're optional. The math problems are not.

Technocratic bias dominates the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which seals the fate of students and schools according to their measurable skills in mathematics, reading, and - lately - science, but nothing more.

It is taken for granted that students who can read well have read well in history, civics, literature, the arts, and the other components of competent citizenship.

But that is sheer humbuggery. The schools emphasize what is going to be tested. Every other subject suffers. That is true not just in Florida but everywhere else where standardized testing has overwhelmed common sense.

The ruinous results of neglecting history were freshly evident last week in two polls that asked Americans whom they considered to be the greatest presidents.

George Washington placed only sixth in one and seventh in the other. Ronald Reagan led one poll, Abraham Lincoln the other, each with 20 percent.

Lincoln is a plausible choice, but not Reagan or any other recent president. Yet even Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy, and George W. Bush outpolled George Washington.

The Boobus Americanus, as H.L. Mencken defined him, cannot distinguish a well-known name from a well-earned reputation. He cannot tell the difference between a George W. Bush and a George Washington.

This seems to be true even of the supposedly well-educated. In the college-graduate subset of the Washington College poll - the one that Lincoln won - Washington was the first choice of only 6 percent. Bush and Reagan also outpolled Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Washington was the second choice of only 8 percent of the total and 10 percent of the college graduates. Again, Reagan and Bush fared better.

Among people who actually know and care about history, there have been three truly great American presidents: Washington, who was the commanding presence at the creation; Lincoln, who saved the union; and Roosevelt, who saved it again. None of the others faced comparable challenges.

A blogger looking for something hopeful in the poll claimed to find it in data showing that 55 percent would prefer Washington over Bush if the election were held today. But that had more to do with partisanship than scholarship; it is simply that Democrats and independents voted against Bush by a greater margin than Republicans voted for him. Yes, 62 percent of the Republicans preferred George W. Bush to George Washington.

History is fascinating for itself, but the practical reason to study it is to learn from it. What made Washington great has a lot to teach about what is going on today.

His stature owes less to his having commanded the victorious Continental Army (a fact that only 46 percent seemed to know) than to what he did afterward to win the peace.

He constructed a national government for which history offered no how-to manual; without the prospect that he would be the first president, it is doubtful that the Constitution would have been ratified. His integrity was above suspicion.

He established the principle of a civilian president who did not serve for life. He had the wisdom to rely on the advice of his treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, and together they made the nation solvent.

And he kept the infant United States from committing suicide in a ruinous war with Great Britain that Thomas Jefferson and other hyperromantic Francophiles were all too eager to fight.

"Most elementarily, he was a thoroughgoing realist," writes Joseph Ellis in His Excellency George Washington. "Though he embraced republican ideals, he believed that the behavior of nations was not driven by ideals but by interests." Friends and foes alike would do only what was best for them.

The same applies to any rational establishment, whether it's a school or a state. America's historical illiteracy is the predictable result of political policies that devalue history and the other humanities. We should not take it for granted that it is merely an unintended result.

Martin Dyckman's e-mail address is dyckman@sptimes.com

[Last modified February 27, 2005, 00:13:19]