Knowledge of History Reaching Crisis Levels

Recently, historian Joel Kotkin argued in Quillette magazine that 

History has moved to the front line of social conflict, but rarely has it been so poorly understood and sketchily taught. After decades of declining interest, only 13 percent of eighth graders achieve proficiency in the subject today. … When I show my students a picture of Lenin, barely one-in-ten of them recognize it. 

 Students saturated by information technology have less encouragement to study the past and, in their classrooms, history is frequently weaponized, glossed over, or ignored.  

This is another reason that this moment is a golden moment for Christian education. Christians revolutionized education through monastic schools, cathedral-based universities, and Protestant ideals of knowledge and learning. We also have a faith grounded in historical events and a proper understanding of the human condition, a condition that transcends time and place.  

Therefore, history is something that we can both study and learn from. In today's world, that's a revolutionary idea... 

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org