Historical Literacy Quotes

Americans are in vital need of the instruction that historians can provide.

I'm somewhat horrified because I don't think the young people today even know what history is. Some of them don't' even study History at school anymore or Geography and they don't know where one place is from another.

Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look - historical ignorance remains a national characteristic.

Students who are interested in learning about the environment should not be dissuaded from doing so, but only if they have proved their proficiency in other basic courses, such as U.S. history. Until then, we need to focus on producing well-educated citizens steeped in their country's history and mindful of their civic responsibilities.

People don't have knowledge and understanding about the outside world, or about history [in the USA].

I had access to books, and I could read... but that more foundational, basic historical awareness, I didn't have any of that.

Certainly, the illiterates of past centuries, then an enormous majority of mankind, knew little of the history of their respective countries and of their civilization. In the minds of modern illiterates, however, who know how to read and write and even teach in schools and at universities, history is present but blurred, in a state of strange confusion; Molière becomes a contemporary of Napoleon, Voltaire, a contemporary of Lenin.

Even getting a college degree does not guarantee a minimal knowledge of U.S. history.

History must share with reading, writing and arithmetic first rank as the most important subjects in the curriculum. Understanding the issues on which citizens of a republic are expected to vote is impossible without an understanding of the past.

Today, public understanding of our past and our system of government is pitifully low.

You don't hate history, you hate the way it was taught to you in high school.

By the time a kid goes to college, if he's taking math or science, at least he knows, or you hope he knows, some basics. But if you're teaching history in college, you have a lot of damage to undo. You basically have to start over because so much of what a kid has already learned is just wrong.

You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.

Nowadays, with history not being taught anymore in American public schools, self-esteem is taking its place.

But we cannot rely on memorials and museums alone. We can tell ourselves we will never forget and we likely won't. But we need to make sure that we teach history to those who never had the opportunity to remember in the first place.

As I started reading about it, I saw that at the beginning of the 19th century, outside of New England - which was an unusually literate place - practically no one could read or write. And even in New England, the overall rate was only about 60 percent. That still means four out of 10 people couldn't put their name to a will.

History education in schools is so poor that students often enter college ignorant of the past - and leave just as unenlightened.

History is the open Bible: we historians are not priests to expound it infallibly: our function is to teach people to read it and to reflect upon it for themselves.

My first reaction every time I delve into an episode of history that I don't know very much about is... my first reaction is anger that my teachers never taught me about it.

The people [in the USA] are not very well informed. They certainly don't know history. They certainly are not interested in foreign affairs very much, unless it comes right to their doorstep. They all learn history through wars. They learn geography through wars.

In antiquity and the Middle Ages reading was necessarily reading aloud.

Americans today don’t know history—even the smart ones who went to Ivy League schools.

To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days.

It is only education and understanding of the past that teaches us not to repeat history.

We are raising a generation of young Americans who are, to a very large degree, historically illiterate. It's not their faults. There's no problem about enlisting their interest in history. None. The problem is the teachers so often have no history in their background.