Anthony Esolen of Touchstone magazine has a post at Mere Comments about a study done by a professor of education at Stanford University in which the latter asked 2000 American high school students “to name the ten most famous Americans from the time Columbus stepped foot on the continent to the present.” Consider this a report on the state of political correctness:
1. Martin Luther King
2. Harriet Tubman
3. Rosa Parks
4. Susan B. Anthony
5. Amelia Earhart
6. Oprah Winfrey
7. Marilyn Monroe
8. Benjamin Franklin
9. Thomas Edison
10. Albert Einstein
Any list of this sort is a matter of opinion, of course, and I have no problem with King, Franklin, or Edison (Einstein is a bit of a stretch, simply because he wasn’t an American for most of his life, but we’ll let that pass). I also have to say I’m glad that high school students know who Tubman, Parks, Anthony, and Earhart are, and that no one would deny that they are important historical figures. The inclusion of Winfrey and Monroe on this list are clearly meant to be inside jokes, especially when you consider that Elvis isn’t on the list. But here’s what bothers Esolen, and me, too: while Winfrey and Monroe are on this list because of silly celebrity, Tubman, Parks, Anthony, and Earhart are on it solely because of the effect of political correctness on our educational system. It in no way denigrates their accomplishments to say that, in the larger scheme of things, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt were more important, and yes, more famous than the four they ought to supplant. The only reason these four names are on this list is because of a perceived need to redress historical grievances by elevating secondary figures who happen to be women and minorities, while leaving students ignorant of the far more important contributions of the white men I’ve mentioned. The latter are slighted in history classes because they are perceived to have been beneficiaries of a culture that enabled them to rise to the top, thereby tainting everything they did basically because they were white men. That they had advantages that others didn’t is undeniable; that that should legitimize ignoring or playing down their accomplishments is ridiculous. It’s a measure of the extent to which identity politics, and identity scholarship, has penetrated the educational system in this country, and it’s a crime against scholarship that it has.
The Reformed Pastor 
April 8, 2008 at 9:12 am
At the risk of sounding hopelessly reactionary, I would argue that Ronald Reagan should be on the list at least as much as some of those other choices.
April 8, 2008 at 10:01 am
It should come as no surprise that public education is not providing a solid base of American history. The rush to be political correct has had it’s impact on our young adults. Looking to the future I predict a stormy forecast.
April 8, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Wow! No Lewis and Clark? No Neil Armstrong?
I guess the emphasis of the survey was on the word “famous.” Kind of shocked, then, that Michael Jordan, Michael Vick, Kobe, Madonna, Beyonce, Fifty Cent, etc., didn’t make the list either.
Come to think of it, neither did Archie, Peyton nor Eli. The world’s going to hell in a handbasket!
April 8, 2008 at 9:06 pm
I lead a junior-senior high youth group. And lest we forget, ninth-graders are… well, let’s just say that they aren’t masters of creative, independent thought. Capable, yes, but to expect profound ruminations on greatness is a little optimistic.
April 9, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Perhaps we should not get to alarmed over these results. It seems to me that the wording of the question is, perhaps deliberately, such as to make the results insignificant.
The question asked who were the most famous, not who were the most important or who had made the most important contributions. Fame is entirely in the eye of the beholder and it changes from generation to generation, from one educational system to the next. The whole question of fame really is irrelevant.
Unfortunately, I think we might get exactly the same list if we ask who had made the most important contributions to America in that time period. If that is so, that would be cause for concern.
April 11, 2008 at 3:20 pm
[…] REFORMED PASTOR: Free Speech Under Attack in Canada; The State of PC Indoctrination …. […]