. . . . Brig. Gen. Wells, a 1975 academy graduate who led the history department from 2000 to 2016, points out that early in the academy’s 70-year history, cadets had four required history courses.
That has now been winnowed down to two courses; American history was removed as a core requirement in 1986.
“To be fair, the cadets at the time — with some justification — think they’re being overworked and if a course has some repetition from something they got in high school, they’re going to complain about it,” Wells told Colorado Matters.
“But, clearly, college-level American history courses are rather more challenging than what some 15-year-old high school sophomore [gets.]”
A number of think tanks, higher education nonprofits and congressional studies in the past few decades have bemoaned the state of American History education in the United States.
A 2010 study from the National Assessment of Educational Progress found only 12 percent of high school seniors “proficient” in the subject.
While America’s service academies pride themselves on accepting only the brightest young minds, Wells said he discovered the same lack of proficiency among his cadets.
He noticed this even in those who could “test out” of college-level U.S. history with A.P. or International Baccalaureate credits.
Wells remembered testing a group of such cadets in the early 2010s and remarked their scores were “awful.”
In 2013, the academy’s history department enrolled 150 of those cadets in a one-semester experimental course in American history at the institution.
“Not surprisingly,” Wells said, “after a semester, at the end of the course, their scores, their knowledge, their fluency with American history went up dramatically.”
While Wells was impressed with the results, academy leadership opted not to reinstate an American history requirement for cadets. Nevertheless, he has been advocating for one ever since. . . . . (read more on CPR News)
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