Ross: Don’t blame Trump for gap in knowledge over a dead president
May 2, 2017, 7:55 AM | Updated: 9:28 am
Suddenly we’re arguing over a dead president.
The latest endless debate is over President Trump opining that President Andrew Jackson could have avoided the Civil War.
“Had Andrew Jackson been a little bit later, you wouldn’t have had the Civil War,” he said.
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It was one of his digressions. He brought it up because he’s been compared to Jackson, but of course Jackson died long before the Civil War, although he did face some of the same issues that finally caused the Civil War.
What I learned from this is that I really have to cut back on my cable watching because I’m hearing CNN panel discussions in my dreams now.
Just stop! Should it really surprise anyone that President Trump’s knowledge of the Civil War might have gaps? If we have learned anything from the first 100 days, it’s that you probably don’t turn to Donald Trump for a rigorous analysis of American history. Or health reform. Or naval armada location.
To be fair, you probably don’t turn to any American for a rigorous analysis of American history, because the surveys show we’ve pretty much stopped teaching it. Unless it’s been made into a musical.
The latest survey I could find showed that 88 percent of US high school seniors fail to achieve even minimum proficiency in history. Our kids think the reason it was called the Civil War is that the soldiers were so polite back then.
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