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Absence Of Historical Sense In America

Absence of Historical Sense in America
  American culture focuses on the future and ignores the past.   We ask our youths, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"   The technology of today attempts to advance towards the future.   The popular phrase "the future is now" embodies the future-centric attitude of America.   George Santayana stated, "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it."   While his words ring true, most Americans lack the basic knowledge of the past in order to be positive citizens of the world and good stewards of the earth.
Some argue that America has a strong historical awareness and this adds to America's greatness in the world community.   While American students study history as part of the curriculum of their public schooling, most citizens are unwilling or unable to think past the set of facts, as they are spoon-fed to them.   Although America's official history only extends a little more than 200 years into the past, as citizens of the world, Americans' scope of history should extend much further than the year 1776.   Often, the history that Americans do manage to glean from their education is misconstrued.   Linda Hogan observes, " For white Americans…Indians have come to represent spirit, heart, an earth-based way of living" (827).   Americans fail to recognize the plight of the American Indians and the fact that they inhabited this land long before Europeans came to the New World.
Television talk show hosts often produce sketches in which the host quizzes common citizens on the street on facts of American history.   The point of these sketches is the humor in the fact that most Americans do not know the simplest of historical facts.   This lack of American historical knowledge is damaging when citizens are not knowledgeable in the civics of the country.   Wallace Stegner states, "I believe…one of our most damaging American traits is our contempt for all history (696).   Many citizens do not posses the knowledge of how the...