5 Simple Ways to Learn Our Country’s History and Help Save the American Republic

Park Rangers set wreaths of flowers inside the Jefferson Memorial as a boy reads inscriptions of Thomas Jefferson's speeches and writings, in Washington, in this file photo. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Commentary

In 1983, the “A Nation at Risk” report, which investigated academic performance in U.S. schools, famously declared that “if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” 

In 2022, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, popularly known as the Nation’s Report Card, found that 40 percent of U.S. eighth graders scored below Basic on the U.S. history assessment test. In 1994, 39 percent of students scored below Basic. In each case, the scores indicated that these students were missing even the fundamentals of our country’s history.

In his recently published collection of essays, “What Really Matters: Restoring a Legacy of Faith, Freedom, and Family,” writer Timothy Goeglein devoted an entire chapter to “Restoring the Importance of American History,” in which he cited these and other statistics revealing the ignorance of so many Americans about their past.

This long decline over the past 40 years and more, Goeglein told us, means that many adults, even those in their 50s, lack even a rudimentary knowledge of civics and their country’s past. He cited a survey showing that only 40 percent of adult respondents knew that the First Amendment protected religious liberty and that only 28 percent were aware that it guaranteed freedom of speech. 

Even worse, perhaps, many U.S. students, especially those in public schools, receive a distorted picture of U.S. history, with all the negatives and few positives. Goeglein further noted that the textbooks and materials used in many classrooms across the nation, such as Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States,” constitute “a socialist reimagining of American history.”

Alongside this slide in knowledge is a diminished education in the virtues. When teachers debunk the Founders, when they focus on the blemishes and flaws rather than on the deeds of the great men and women who built this country, they undermine both civic virtues and the heroes who might otherwise have inspired students. 

Reversing this assault on U.S. history, if indeed it can be reversed, will take decades. Those of us with children and grandchildren have too much at stake—namely, the future of the country in which they will live—to wait for our schools to shift direction and teach U.S. history in its fullness. 

Here are five quick starts to giving your children the history they deserve.

Talk to Oldsters

An old proverb states, “When an old person dies, a library burns to the ground.”

That grandparent or family friend who is 75 years or older has lived through 30 percent of this country’s history. He or she also came of age in a time when U.S. history counted in the classroom. Have your adolescent or teen talk to that person, even writing down questions ahead of time, about the culture and issues of their day. These conversations can spark a lifelong interest in the past.

Read Biographies

As is the case with these conversations with the elderly, reading biographies is a great way to enter the past. We all like a good story, and many of these accounts are fascinating. Bookstores and public libraries offer these stories for young people from pre-K right up to college and beyond.

Pick up a book or two by David McCullough for the teen in your life, or one of the many series books for the younger set, describing the lives of figures like Daniel Boone, Abraham Lincoln, or Abigail Adams, and you have given them a wonderful time machine into the past.  

Watch History Online

Thanks to the blessings of technology, a library of films about U.S. history—TV shows, movies, documentaries, cartoons, and more—is available online. Cartoons like “Liberty Kids,” instructional videos at Hillsdale College, shows for kids and adults at Praeger U, series like Ken Burns’s “Civil War”: These and more are available on YouTube alone, often at no charge. You might even make this screen time a family activity and discuss the points of the shows afterward.

Visit Historical Sites

It’s great to visit places like Monticello, Gettysburg, the Alamo, or California’s Spanish missions in person, but these days, you can take tours of many historical sites from the comfort of your living room. Many museums, battlefields, and other national sites offer virtual tours, while others feature special exhibits, all of them online. Go to YouTube, and you will find lots of good material for the armchair traveler.

Start a History Book Club 

Find some like-minded parents and launch a history book club for kids. The past half-century has brought us works by so many fine historians. McCullough, for example, had a lifelong fascination with the United States and wrote wonderful books about the Johnstown Flood, pioneers, America’s Founders, and more. Interested high schoolers would enjoy his books. The younger set would enjoy getting together just as much with friends to share books and videos.  

You might consider starting a similar group for adults. Bring together friends, a good biography or even American poetry, and some refreshments, and you have made your den into a mini-classroom. 

Goeglein’s essay “As We Celebrate Freedom, We Are Forgetting From Whence It Came,” a topic particularly relevant in this year’s celebration of the Declaration of Independence, includes an equally relevant quote from President Ronald Reagan’s 1989 Farewell Address to the nation:

“If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result ultimately in the erosion of the American spirit.”

It’s up to us to keep the American memory alive and well, and with America’s 250th birthday party now underway, this is the perfect time to begin that project.

Goeglein wrote: “Every young American needs to learn the story of a nation with a glorious vision of unity, freedom, and dignity for all. That is what I will be celebrating in 2026, and it is my hope that all Americans will join me in properly exalting our nation’s true heritage by learning about its history.”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.