As their nation’s status in the world becomes questionable, Americans are woefully ignorant of their own history and government, repeated studies have shown. The latest of these, a new Intercollegiate Studies Institute report, found that on a 33-question test on history and political and economic institutions, 71 percent failed.

Amazingly, college graduates scored an average of 57 percent—only 13 percent higher than non-college graduates. Darryl DeMarzio, an education professor at the University of Scranton, attributed this to the lack of history being taught, and the way it is taught, in higher education. CNSNews.com reports:

“One of the purposes of a history course now is not the acquisition of historical knowledge, but it’s a vague skill like ‘thinking historically,’ or something like that,” DeMarzio said.The culprit is that teachers are steeped in a philosophy called “constructivism.””That’s the idea that knowledge is not something that teachers possess and give to students or teach students,” DeMarzio told CNSNews.com. “Rather, knowledge is a process in which students construct meaning for themselves.”So a historical question in a history class today is not, ‘Who were the major political participants of World War ii?’ But it’s ‘What do you think of World War ii?’ or ‘What might we learn from World War ii?’ Think for yourself. Construct your own knowledge, your own meaning out of this.”

Even worse, elected officials who took the survey scored five points lower than the average person. For example, 43 percent of politicians did not know what the electoral college does. And 79 percent of them didn’t know that the Bill of Rights forbids the government to establish a state religion.

New York Times columnist David Brooks partly blamed political correctness and multiculturalism in the education system. He told CNSNews.com:

It’s partly political correctness—which is that there are no great men and no great women; it’s all “social movements,” its all people, and its all oppressed people, is who you focus on—and that’s how you show your sympathy. It’s (considered) sort of elitist to look at the great and not the equal.

As Herbert W. Armstrong proved in The United States and Britain in Prophecy, America descended from the ancient Israelite tribe of Manasseh, whose name is derived from the verb “to forget.” To understand the tragic consequences of America’s forgetting of its own history, read Gerald Flurry’s February 2002 Trumpet cover story, “The Law of History.”