History Week

So Slate has a number of history-themed articles this week, which is cool, because while history is hardly ignored in the media, it's rare to see discussions like this one between Diane Ravitch and Jon Wiener about the kind of things that historians actually discuss and worry about.

I haven't had a chance yet to read all of the articles (so I'm sure I'll post more later), but this line in Ravitch's post today struck me:

In no other subject do a majority of students register so little knowledge of a
subject taught in school.

I know that American students have for years and years scored low in history, but somehow I never realized it was so bad. Partly this is because I just can't wrap my head around the idea that the average American has more knowledge of math or science than history. Maybe that's just because history has always come easily for me, and I just sort of assumed that it was easy for everyone else (at least relatively speaking).

Seriously, what subject could be easier? There's little jargon, no computation, and much of the material is stuff that people already know and have opinions about (George Washington, the Civil War, Hitler, etc.). Your average intelligent person, I've always figured, would be far more able to carry on a conversation about World War II than the Pythagorean Theorem. This has even caused me to think, at times, that my degree in history is really no big deal because, come on, anyone can do history - it takes a genius to do biochemistry.

But apparently, my assumptions were wrong. People really do have trouble with history, and I'm not sure why.