Joan Sutherland Quotes

We are raising students in America who are, by and large, historically illiterate.

Americans today don’t know history—even the smart ones who went to Ivy League schools.

History education in schools is so poor that students often enter college ignorant of the past - and leave just as unenlightened.

We are raising a generation of young Americans who are, to a very large degree, historically illiterate. It's not their faults. There's no problem about enlisting their interest in history. None. The problem is the teachers so often have no history in their background.

The study of history is in the truest sense an education, and a training for political life.

I think that there are some teachers that do a very good job of incorporating culture and history. And there are some teachers who could use a little more help in that area.

There's no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.

One of the things that really bothers me is that Americans don't have any sense of history. The majority of Americans don't have any idea of where we've come from, so they naturally succumb to the kind of cliche version that Ronald Reagan represented.

I think people in general have neglected to learn about history.

Those of our people who do not study history can be duped into believing anything.

Certainly, the illiterates of past centuries, then an enormous majority of mankind, knew little of the history of their respective countries and of their civilization. In the minds of modern illiterates, however, who know how to read and write and even teach in schools and at universities, history is present but blurred, in a state of strange confusion; Molière becomes a contemporary of Napoleon, Voltaire, a contemporary of Lenin.

Even getting a college degree does not guarantee a minimal knowledge of U.S. history.

I think a sense of history and perspective for our young people today is essential.

Scientists habitually moan that the public doesn't understand them. But they complain too much: public ignorance isn't peculiar to science. It's sad if some citizens can't tell a proton from a protein. But it's equally sad if they're ignorant of their nation's history, can't speak a second language, or can't find Venezuela or Syria on a map.

I believe that if we want our children to understand the world beyond their classroom, we must bring the world into their classroom.

We take it for granted sometimes that certain parts of our history are told, and we take it for granted that we know all that stuff, and we move forward along on that basis, but there are also massive gaps, and we have to try to address them.

You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.

Today, public understanding of our past and our system of government is pitifully low.

I have condemned my kids to a lifetime of geographic illiteracy.

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

The majority of U.S. high school students don't know within 50 years when the Civil War occurred.

To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days.

It seems we're not only uninformed about our present, we're ignorant of our past.

Like other Americans, U.S. journalists have often neglected the study of history; they have much remedial work to do in trying to understand who did what to whom, why and when - and who did it first.

It is only education and understanding of the past that teaches us not to repeat history.