NEW YORK-If you ever wondered why American children graduate from school virtually illiterate, there is probably no better example than National History Day. Founded in Cleveland, Ohio, by a group of Case Western Reserve University educators appalled at the fact that their students couldn't tell Dick Nixon from headcheese, the teachers who originated the concept were upset that schools were expanding math and science while sacrificing the humanities. What the originators probably did not count on was the way a system that gave priority to math and science, would twist an exercise in history into a competition in which the losers burst into tears, or by setting themes that limited what the students could use as topics for their projects, such as the 1999 National History Day's theme, "science in history." This year's National History Day is June 11^th, 2000, and will take place at the University of Maryland.

One history teacher introduced National History Day to Long Island, NY, 19 years ago after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and Robbie Harte, the teacher, began taking her students to lay a wreath on his grave on an annual trip to Washington. "Then, one year, the kids started asking, 'Who's Kennedy?'" Teachers hate to hear that it may be their fault that the children in their classes are not learning anything of significance; they point the finger at the administration, at the powerless parents, and even at the children themselves. But never, never, do these highly paid professionals (and yes, Virginia, they are paid better than you might think based on media reports of striking teachers), act as adults and take responsibility, something they never hesitate to tell the children to do.

What they do teach the kids about is how illustrious the presidents are; especially the founding fathers, the majority of whom were slavemasters. This detail is not entirely neglected, but it is trivialized, as though it was an ordinary fact of life in 18^th century America, which is not historic. An excellent example is all the speculation going on about Thomas Jefferson, who has been portrayed as everything from a proto-abolitionist to the ideal democrat. This is speculation because it is the invention of the same "historians" who previous to the discovery of DNA evidence that Jefferson fathered children with his slaves, had denied the oral histories of those families who claimed descent from the old slavemaster. The truth only hurts if you actively deny it, and most of America has been spoon-fed an idealized and romanticized version of Jefferson that does not match the man, who was a crafty, shrewd attorney who could write the words, "all men are created equal," and still defend the class system that gave him his privileges. Now historians are trying to paint a picture of him as a man who was not a racist bigot, which he himself attests to in his only published work, Notes on the State of Virginia. While he was procreating with his slave, Sally Hemings, he was writing and publishing works that suggested that African Americans were inclined to be thieves, and that inter-marriage between races was morally wrong. But now that the irrefutable evidence is in that Jefferson probably started having sex with his slave when she was all of 16, and possibly 14, the "historians" are trying to sugar-coat it by asserting that Jefferson had a love affair with Sally. The likelihood that this is false is enormous, but that never stopped the hagiographers who have never found a lie too devious to use to paint halos around the presidents.

With this kind of instruction going on in public schools, it isn't too hard to understand why the students are graduating without knowing anything of value. One look at the National History Day's student projects gives a revealing look into what the kids are being encouraged to investigate. One New Yorker did nine months of work writing the story of the air conditioner's impact on culture and the economy (nine months is the average time it takes for most of the students to assemble their presentations). Another entrant presented "The Invention of Bubblegum," while a group of D-average jocks entered a presentation on the subject of "Skinheads," a group most jocks wind up joining after graduating, since the skills they develop in phys. ed. are only useful for getting into fights and defending antique notions of masculinity. In addition to these great additions to man's knowledge of his past, you can add "Spam: A Turning Point in History," as well as a drawn out presentation on the origins of the national highway system, wherein judges learned that the Eisenhower Administration warned Americans that they might need superhighways to flee Communist nuclear attacks; what the judges probably were not told was that the highways were built for the deployment of troops throughout the United States, and that in most scenarios the vast majority of the American people were probably dead in the first hour of a thermonuclear attack. Another little tidbit probably not discussed was the state of social tensions in the 1950s, when African Americans were virtually non-citizens, and there was a growing mass awareness of the truth about the origins of the republic.

"I find the idea of hundreds of kids screaming their little hearts out for somebody who had written a historical paper mighty heart-warming," says Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Mike Wallace, regarding the contest; but Andy Meyers wasn't so sure. The Fieldston history teacher was chagrined that his prep school's 18 entrants won 13 awards, while the entire working-class borough of Staten Island got none. Wallace's comment also highlights the ambivalence of historians to the causes over excitement of children in the subject of history. It doesn't seem to occur to Wallace that the reason the kids are screaming their little hearts out is not because they really understand history, but because the teachers have turned the subject into a sport, with winners and losers. And the winners always seem to be those who offer up history as the judges want to hear it, so don't offer papers on how the slavemasters who founded the republic of the United States were actually unqualified to found a free society, since they, themselves, held human beings in bondage. It's a dark day in America only because the truth has no chance of being broadcast. Instead we get fed a constant stream of newspeak. Anyone who counters with the facts is shouted down by a chorus of millionaire "informed commentators" as irresponsible. So is it any wonder that Johnny can't read or write, or find his own country on a map?

SOURCE: Facts for this article were derived the 6 May, 2000, issue of the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Edition, from an article entitled, "Long Day's Journey Into The Past," by Mark Fritz.