Don't Know Much About History

A remarkable generational change is also coming. Most of the historians in the declining fields, economic, intellectual and diplomatic history, earned their degrees more than 30 years ago. At the same time, more than 50% of the new PhDs are now trained in women and gender history, in cultural history (a watered-down version of social history), in world and African-American history. This is going to make an extraordinary difference in what kind of scholarship will continue to be undertaken, and how the past will be taught. The history profession, seemingly innovative and robust, is in fact intellectually debilitated, and sadly reduced in scope.

Most ominously of all, changes in college curricula across the nation threaten to severely reduce the place of history in liberal arts education. Americans are threatened with losing touch with their past. We are in this regard on the brink of becoming a nation adrift. New core requirements at many institutions permit students to graduate without taking a single history course. When one considers how much first rate history scholarship and teaching remains in the academy, this is a tragedy. And yet, in contemplating the evolving state of the profession, one might equally ask - will they be missing so much?

From "The Mangling of American History" by David Gordon at Minding the Campus [my emphases]

"... extraordinary difference in ... how the past will be taught." 

"... losing touch with [our] past."

Well, that may be true for some people living in some houses in These United States of America,

but it is certainly not true for those of us living on Farther Along Farm.

Here on the Farm, we keep in touch. We learn American History by reading crappy old books.

From Mary Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage by Ruth Painter Randall, published in 1953 by Little, Brown and Company, Boston

~~
Yes indeed! I did make another trip to Palmer House Thrift Store-- the day before we traveled behind enemy lines.