“God and Texas! Victory or Death!”

I was going to take a day off from blogging, but after living in Texas for four years (Pony Up, y’all!), I can’t not remember the Alamo.  It was on March 6, 1836, that the final assault took place – just days after Texas declared its independence from Mexico - and 189 defenders were overrun and killed.

But speaking of not remembering…  A survey came out last week that basically said today’s teens are historically illiterate.  It claims they are a little better on the more recent stuff (Pearl Harbor, MLK) which makes sense, but once you get back into the 19th century and before… well, let’s just say that to a lot of them, Alamo is just a place to rent a car.

But as Kevin Levin at Civil War Memory noted, this doesn’t really mean that schools are getting worse at teaching the basics.  He rightly notes that these types of studies done decades ago yielded even worse results!

My theory is this: Schools are there to provide a foundational knowledge for the students who seek to learn it.  There will always be kids who opt out of the learning process.  Sadly, they then usually become adults who never reverse their course.  But there also exists the “true learners,” those who can’t soak up enough of whatever interests them.  These types of illiteracy studies never seem to properly account for the ones with passion.

Recommended reading: Lone Star Nation: How a Ragged Army of Volunteers Won the Battle for Texas Independence – and Changed America