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Don't Forget US Heritage or its Architects
As the recent, widely-syndicated piece by Leonard Pitts Jr. demonstrates, America is mired in a state of total historical ignorance. In 2000, ACTA published the alarming report "Losing America's Memory" in which 81% of college seniors surveyed at 55 of the nation's top colleges and universities conclusively failed a high school US history exam. Less than a third could identify the US Constitution as establishing the separation of powers; less than a quarter could identify James Madison as the Father of the Constitution; fewer than a third recognized that George Washington was the general at the battle of Yorktown.
That report inspired Congress to pass a joint resolution calling for a national response and the Education Leadership Council to adopt a resolution to address America's historical amnesia. Over 800 news stories reported on the study. But there is still so much work to be done and the duty of preserving our memory is not the schools' task alone. To this aim, one of the principal messages of E Pluribus Unum, a Bradley Project on America's National Identity publication coordinated by ACTA, is to restore the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln to their rightful place as distinct national celebrations and not belittle their importance by lumping them together into a generic President's Day.
Thankfully Rep. Frank Wolf, whose district includes Washington's home, Mount Vernon, has, to ACTA's pleasure and fortune, introduced bill H.R. 2268 to reestablish George Washington's birthday as a national holiday.
As ACTA president Anne Neal commented in a recent op-ed, "'By introducing the bill, the legislators acknowledge a national problem. And they share a concern raised by President James Buchanan in 1860, and cited by Representative Wolf, that 'when the birthday of Washington shall be forgotten, liberty will have perished from the earth."'
Posted by Max Brindle on July 26, 2011 at July 26, 2011 11:39 AM
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