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Classic Kirk:<\/strong>a curated selection of Russell Kirk’s perennial essays<\/h4>\n
A Note from the Editor<\/p>\n
Russell Kirk’s popular column, “From the Academy,” in National Review <\/em>largely addressed themes of decadence and renewal in education at all levels. In the following selection, Kirk takes issue with the contemporary opinion that history is not a “practical” subject. Instead, he contends that the study of history is “the most valuable<\/em> of all intellectual disciplines.” He <\/span>warns that the neglect of historical studies cuts the rising generation off from historical consciousness, condemning them to what T. S. Eliot called \u201cthe provincialism of time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″ collapsed=”off” prev_background_color=”#ebebeb”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_text admin_label=”essay text” _builder_version=”4.23.1″ background_pattern_color=”rgba(0,0,0,0.2)” background_mask_color=”#ffffff” text_text_shadow_horizontal_length=”text_text_shadow_style,%91object Object%93″ text_text_shadow_horizontal_length_tablet=”0px” text_text_shadow_vertical_length=”text_text_shadow_style,%91object Object%93″ text_text_shadow_vertical_length_tablet=”0px” text_text_shadow_blur_strength=”text_text_shadow_style,%91object Object%93″ text_text_shadow_blur_strength_tablet=”1px” link_text_shadow_horizontal_length=”link_text_shadow_style,%91object Object%93″ link_text_shadow_horizontal_length_tablet=”0px” 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z_index_tablet=”0″]<\/p>\n “From the Academy” column, National Review<\/em>, September 16, 1977<\/strong><\/p>\n A<\/span>t every level of schooling in America, the study of history has been declining. Not seldom the historical discipline is abandoned in favor of courses in \u201cspecial social problems.\u201d And of course the television has made its inroads: who wants Thucydides when we have Barbara Walters? The professors of history are alarmed. They, at least, recall the observation of Santayana that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.<\/span><\/p>\n Mr. Richard S. Kirkendall, executive secretary of the Organization of American Historians, made an interesting report late in 1975 on this sorry decay of historical studies. Since then a considerable variety of newspapers and organizations have tested or questioned students and teachers. All these surveys have been disheartening.<\/span><\/p>\n Professor Kirkendall\u2019s report, \u201cThe Status of History in the Schools\u201d (<\/span>Journal of American History<\/span><\/i>, September 1975), proved, \u201cif proof is necessary, that history is in crisis and that history\u2019s crisis is not merely a part of the large difficulties of academic life at the present time.\u201d One of the chief causes of declining interest in history, Mr. Kirkendall and his colleagues found, was the notion that history \u201cis not a practical subject.\u201d One thinks of Albert Jay Nock\u2019s essay \u201cThe Value of Useless Knowledge,\u201d in which Nock argued that though historical knowledge has no immediately practical application, nevertheless it is the most <\/span>valuable<\/span><\/i> of all intellectual disciplines.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSigns of improvement are scarce,\u201d Mr. Kirkendall reported; and though the Organization of American Historians has dredged up a few little cheering symptoms of historical revival since 1975, in general we are no better off in this discipline than we were two years ago. \u201cConfidence and interest in history are not nearly as widespread and strong among students, educational administrators, and politicians as they were only a few years ago. Doubts about its usefulness for the individual and for society now exert a large influence on attitudes and decisions,\u201d Professor Kirkendall concluded. \u201cIt seems unlikely that historians can destroy the influence of presentism, but they can reduce the anti-historical consequences of it by demonstrating the value of historical perspective and historical comparisons and the importance of a sense of time and place.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Mr. Kirkendall is a temperate historian. My own academic discipline, at three universities, was modern history; and I am tempted to be intemperate about the grim phenomenon of what amounts to deliberate neglect, or positive exclusion, of history.<\/span><\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/p>\n Consider the results in St. Louis, late last year, of testing a representative 122 high school students on their knowledge of basic American history, government, and world affairs. The test, a sound if simple one, was prepared by the Gallup organization and the National Municipal League. The passing score was supposed to be seventy out of one hundred questions. In fact, the average grade was 49.15. Only 22 students passed the St. Louis test; one hundred failed. Most of these students were graduating seniors.<\/span><\/p>\n Or consider the <\/span>New York Times\u2019<\/span><\/i> History Knowledge and Attitude Survey, conducted among 1,856 freshmen at 194 college campuses last year. Forty-four questions were asked. The average student in the sample answered correctly only 21 of these questions; the highest score by any student was 41. History department chairmen and social science coordinators in six cities were asked to evaluate this test. They estimated that a typical college-bound high school senior ought to be able to get a score of 70 percent. Actually, only one college freshman in 12 scored that high.<\/span><\/p>\n One of the liveliest historical writers of our time, Professor John Lukacs, has argued that we are entering upon an era when historical literature will supplant the novel and other forms of literary expression. Let us devoutly hope so; but as yet the signs of this are few.<\/span><\/p>\n We learn from history that we learn nothing from history, Hegel wrote. Perhaps that hard truth will revive our historical consciousness, after experience of adversity. I mean that when the gods of the copybook headings with fire and slaughter return, chastened men and women perceive afresh that they should have paid some attention to the record of human endeavor\u2014which we call history.<\/span><\/p>\n T. S. Eliot remarked in a memorable lecture that we have been condemning the rising generation to a new form of provincialism: the provincialism of time, imprisoning people in their own little present moment. Eliot knew that aside from revelation our only source of humane knowledge is history, in the larger sense of that word. Only the past is knowable. The present is an evanescent film upon the deep well of the past; the future, diverting though it be to speculate about, is quite unknowable.<\/p>\n So if we cut off the rising generation from historical consciousness, we cut them off from knowledge generally. What can be done about this decay? Better historical writing and better historical teaching could help. I think of the advice of Disraeli, in <\/span>Contarini Fleming<\/span><\/i>: \u201cRead no history, nothing but biography\u2026\u201d Disraeli meant that the historical concreteness of biography captures the imagination more readily than does historical abstraction. I tried something of the sort in some textbook work I did a few years ago for the Educational Research Council of America; but I have had few emulators.<\/span><\/p>\n However that may be, the modern unhistorical, or anti-historical, attitude is unique in the history of civilized man as a widespread social phenomenon. It seems to parallel the wide lack of interest in the question of the immortality of the soul. I suspect that people uninterested in the soul will forfeit their own souls; and that a people uninterested in history presently will cease to have a history, or to be a people.<\/span><\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 The Russell Kirk Legacy, LLC<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_3,1_3,1_3″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_column type=”1_3″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_image admin_label=”More Classic Kirk Essays image” src=”https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Classic-Kirk-Essays-button.png” url=”https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/?page_id=33656&preview=true” url_new_window=”on” align_tablet=”center” align_last_edited=”on|desktop” _builder_version=”4.0.11″]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_3″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_code admin_label=”Mail Chimp sign up code” _builder_version=”4.2.2″ custom_margin=”0px|||” custom_padding=”0px|||” z_index_tablet=”500″ locked=”off”]<\/p>\nRepeating History<\/h1>\n