12/05/2025
We try desperately at the Belton Area Museum Association to make history accessible, engaging, and relevant. These are the reasons why:
I may lose some of you for this.
I’ve said it for years: we’re in trouble.
-Children are learning social studies, not history. They have no context or grasp of chronology since social science took over during the Progressive Era. Instead, they’re presented with themes, unit studies, and deconstructed bits—and no idea how they fit together. By the time they can study it properly, they just don’t care. On average, schools focus on STEM and reading, and history is put on the backburner. Historical field trips happen more and more infrequently. History is consistently voted as the least liked subject, to say nothing of the abysmal test scores.
-Americans are generally historically illiterate: studies and surveys have shown that we don’t know history very well, and although we learned some in high school, it hasn’t really stuck. This is particularly concerning because at least one survey showed a HUGE lack of knowledge among adults about civics and how the US government works. (The ones who knew the most?—people over the age of 65.)
We are now several generations deep into historical illiteracy, and this has caused a few tragic side effects:
1. Parents often don’t know how to introduce history because they hated it themselves, so many homeschoolers—whom I know personally—just don’t teach it. Ive taught kids in high school who know almost nothing about the past. NOTHING.
2. For homeschoolers who do teach it, many use subpar curriculum which is not written or developed by historians, and which contain several historical fallacies—but the content appeals to certain social, political, or religious ideologies, and that’s why these publishers stay in business. This is true regardless of party or religion.
3. Americans are voting without any knowledge of the voting process. This should be alarming to EVERYONE, no matter what their political loyalties. New Americans, those immigrating from other countries, know more about our history than we do—thanks to the Naturalization Test. My opinion? If you don’t know the three branches of government, you shouldn’t vote. (Ps. This is unconstitutional, but it’s my personal view.)
When you add these concerns to the fact that Americans are stressed out, exhausted, overworked, just trying to do what’s best for their children with what limited money, time, and resources they have, you have perfect conditions for academic complacency, or event neglect.
But they’re just doing what they can to get by.
The schools don’t help.
Few states require rigorous history classes for high school graduates, and more universities are dropping history requirements for Bachelor’s degrees.
Why study something you don’t have to?
Why waste the time and money?
Not to mention, less history degrees are awarded every single year, and I expect it to continue dropping as college gets more expensive.
Misinformation is rampant.
Not many are fact-checking.
AI is changing absolutely everything.
Deep in my soul, I feel like a Dark Age is coming, like the one in Greece (1100-800 BC) or in the Middle Ages.
History is the necessary evil, the gross-tasting medicine that students suffer through because the state tells them they have to.
….this is perhaps the worst part.
The past is full of life, powerful lessons, adventures, and sorrow.
It’s rich, wild, thrilling and horrifying.
It’s the story of all of us, of our ancestors and how we got here.
It’s in the ground, the walls, and in our cells.
It’s a great, epic, wild story that is still being told—
And we get the amazing opportunity to participate in that story.
I wish people knew.
I wish they KNEW.
Everything would be different.
