HOUGHTON — A recent national survey conducted by Soap Hub, an online magazine that covers American daytime soap operas, discovered that fully 33% of Michigan residents admitted they learn history from television.

The survey found that while a national average of 27% confessed to learning about history primarily through films and shows on streaming services such as Netflix, Michigan stands six points higher.

The study included approximately 3,000 participants, and revealed that 55% of respondents think that historically-based dramas, such as The Crown, should be clearly advertised as fictional, “which is fair enough, as, of course, it’s not a documentary. And finally and quite refreshingly, 89% of people agree that learning about history enables us to develop better understanding of the world in which we live,” said Cherry Media, which published the findings of the survey.

Cherry Media is a New England-based digital marketing agency that helps brands of all size to grow online.

Broken down by state, the survey found that in Nebraska had the highest percentage points, with 52% of the respondents admitting that they learn history from streaming services. In comparison, Montana and Idaho tied for only 11% who said they learn from only from streaming services.

Worse, the report goes on, 46% of the respondents admitted to never reading history books.

Soap Hub’s survey has not uncovered any new revelations regarding Americans and history.

On Feb. 20, 2019, the New York Post published an op-ed by Columnist Max Boot, titled: “Americans’ ignorance of history is a national scandal.”

In his op-ed, Boot stated that a survey, conducted by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, found that more Americans could identify Michael Jackson as the composer of ‘Beat It’ and ‘Billie Jean’ than could identify the Bill of Rights as a body of amendments to the U.S. Constitution, “more than a third did not know the century in which the American Revolution took place,” and “half of the respondents believed the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation or the War of 1812 were before the American Revolution,” he stated.

“As historians, Hal Brands and Francis Gavin argue in War on the Rocks, (that) since the 1960s, history professors have retreated from public debate into their own esoteric pursuits,” Boot argued. “The push to emphasize ‘cultural, social and gender history,’ and to pay ‘greater attention to the experiences of ‘under-represented and oppressed groups,’ they write, has been a welcome corrective to an older historiography that focused almost entirely on powerful white men. But like many revolutions, this one has gone too far, leading to the neglect of political, diplomatic and military history — subjects that students need to study and, as enrollment figures indicate, students want to study (them), but that universities perversely neglect. Historian Jill Lepore notes that we have ditched an outdated national narrative without creating a new one to take its place, leaving a vacuum to be filled by tribalists.”

Shannon Watkins, senior writer at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, in her Sept. 24, 2020, article: Did You Know? Students are Clueless About History, went a step farther, placing much of the blame on the learning institutions themselves.

While students at many colleges are technically required to take a history course to fulfill their general education requirements, she stated, many institutions “are extremely lenient” about what they count as a foundational history class.

“Even history majors at UNC-Chapel Hill don’t need to study American history for their degree,” she wrote.” They are, however, required to take a class in African, Asian, and Middle Eastern history, or Latin American history. History majors at other top schools such as the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University can also skip American history.”

Watkins went on to state that countless surveys reveal “just how ignorant Americans are of their own history.”

According to a 2018 survey conducted by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, only 1 in 3 Americans would be able to pass the U.S. citizenship test, she stated. A 2011 Newsweek survey found that 70 percent of Americans didn’t know that the Constitution is the “supreme law of the land.” And according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center, 22 percent of Americans cannot name any of the three branches of government. In 2017, only 26 percent could name all three branches.

“Universities, however, don’t only fail to teach American history–they actively promote material that depicts America as racist, sexist, xenophobic, and fundamentally immoral,” Watkins argued. “Pseudo-historians like Howard Zinn and error-ridden publications such as the 1619 Project have gained special prominence in both the K-12 and higher education systems.”