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Most college students think America invented slavery, professor finds
The College Fix ^ | October 31, 2016 | Kate Hardiman

Posted on 02/26/2021 4:57:57 PM PST by grundle

For 11 years, Professor Duke Pesta gave quizzes to his students at the beginning of the school year to test their knowledge on basic facts about American history and Western culture.

The most surprising result from his 11-year experiment? Students’ overwhelming belief that slavery began in the United States and was almost exclusively an American phenomenon, he said.

“Most of my students could not tell me anything meaningful about slavery outside of America,” Pesta told The College Fix. “They are convinced that slavery was an American problem that more or less ended with the Civil War, and they are very fuzzy about the history of slavery prior to the Colonial era. Their entire education about slavery was confined to America.”

Pesta, currently an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, has taught the gamut of Western literature—from the Classics to the modern—at seven different universities, ranging from large research institutions to small liberal arts colleges to branch campuses. He said he has given the quizzes to students at Purdue University, University of Tennessee Martin, Ursinus College, Oklahoma State University, and University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.

The origin of these quizzes, which Pesta calls “cultural literacy markers,” was his increasing discomfort with gaps in his students’ foundational knowledge.

“They came to college without the basic rudiments of American history or Western culture and their reading level was pretty low,” Pesta told The Fix.

Before even distributing the syllabus for his courses, Pesta administered his short quizzes with basic questions about American history, economics and Western culture. For instance, the questions asked students to circle which of three historical figures was a president of the United States, or to name three slave-holding countries over the last 2,000 years, or define “capitalism” and “socialism” in one sentence each.

Often, more students connected Thomas Jefferson to slavery than could identify him as president, according to Pesta. On one quiz, 29 out of 32 students responding knew that Jefferson owned slaves, but only three out of the 32 correctly identified him as president. Interestingly, more students— six of 32—actually believed Ben Franklin had been president.

Pesta said he believes these students were given an overwhelmingly negative view of American history in high school, perpetuated by scholars such as Howard Zinn in “A People’s History of the United States,” a frequently assigned textbook.

What’s more, he began to observe a shift in his students’ quiz responses in the early 2000s. Before that time, Pesta described his students as “often historically ignorant, but not politicized.” Since the early 2000s, Pesta has found that “many students come to college preprogrammed in certain ways.”

“They cannot tell you many historical facts or relate anything meaningful about historical biographies, but they are, however, stridently vocal about the corrupt nature of the Republic, about the wickedness of the founding fathers, and about the evils of free markets,” Pesta said. “Most alarmingly, they know nothing about the fraught history of Marxist ideology and communist governments over the last century, but often reductively define socialism as ‘fairness.’”

Pesta also noted that, early on, his students’ “blissful ignorance was accompanied by a basic humility about what they did not know.” But over time he said he increasingly saw “a sense of moral superiority in not knowing anything about our ‘racist and sexist’ history and our ‘biased’ institutions.”

“As we now see on campus,” Pesta said, “social justice warriors are arguing that even reading the great books of Western culture is at best a micro-aggression, and at worst an insidious form of cultural imperialism and indoctrination.”

Pesta, an outspoken critic of Common Core, said he believes that these attitudes will become more pronounced moving forward, due to Common Core architect David Coleman’s rewrite of Advanced Placement American and European history standards.

Pesta argues that Coleman, now president of the College Board, “has further politicized the teaching of history, reducing the story of Western culture to little more than a litany of crimes, exploitations, and genocides, while simultaneously whitewashing the history of ideologies like socialism and communism.”

Despite no longer giving the quizzes, Pesta told The Fix that he continues “to seek effective ways to teach students the literature of Western culture, which it is not only alien and complex, but often condemned by students before it is truly encountered.”

“We must absolutely teach those areas where Western culture has fallen short, but always with the recognition that such criticism is possible because of the freedoms and advantages offered by Western culture,” he said.


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: americanculture; bidenvoters; college; collegemorons; commoncore; communism; culturalliteracy; culturewars; davidcoleman; dukepesta; education; epicfailure; equitystudents; ignorance; school; sjw; slavery; socialism; socialjustice; university; westernculture
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To: rlmorel
The Aztecs, however...something was indeed wrong with them.

Everyone thought that about the Aztecs. There was a reason so many of their subjected people joined Cortez.

If Cortez had confined himself to beating the Aztecs and kept his word to his allies the history of Mexico would have been very different.

61 posted on 02/26/2021 8:56:13 PM PST by Harmless Teddy Bear (May their path be strewn with Legos, may they step on them with bare feet until they repent. )
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To: Blood of Tyrants

It was mostly white Christians who bought the slaves from the slave traders in the United States.


62 posted on 02/26/2021 8:59:49 PM PST by Bull Snipe
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To: Harmless Teddy Bear

Did you know that a direct descendant of Monteczuma is a member of the Spanish nobility?

Designated by Juan Carlos I of Spain
Duke of Moctezuma de Tultengo - Juan José Marcilla de Teruel-Moctezuma y Valcárcel
Inherted the title in 2014 when his father died.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Moctezuma_de_Tultengo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moctezuma_II

I find it amazing !


63 posted on 02/26/2021 9:07:43 PM PST by Reily
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To: vpintheak

The first slave market in Europe is on the coast of southern Portugal.


64 posted on 02/26/2021 9:09:04 PM PST by ptsal (Vote R.E.D. >>>Remove Every Democrat ***)
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To: realcleanguy

More like a success - ignorance and miseducation by design.


65 posted on 02/26/2021 9:12:41 PM PST by Republican Wildcat
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To: simpson96

Absolutely.

Except the 22 year old college graduate would probably just scream “lies! lies!” and think they were the ones that were brilliant.


66 posted on 02/26/2021 9:13:41 PM PST by Republican Wildcat
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To: Reily
Yep.

Spain were capable of being both very barbaric and very civilized toward their conquered. Oddly sometimes at about the same time.

67 posted on 02/26/2021 9:19:45 PM PST by Harmless Teddy Bear (May their path be strewn with Legos, may they step on them with bare feet until they repent. )
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To: ptsal

Lots of slave markets in Europe prior to that !

For example: Rome had three slave revolts. (We only know about the last one becase of the movie Spartacus.) They bought those slaves at a market I am sure they didn’t come in the mail.

The Greeks had slaves & slave markets too !


68 posted on 02/26/2021 9:27:28 PM PST by Reily
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To: Harmless Teddy Bear

Yes !
Its very intriguing history.


69 posted on 02/26/2021 9:29:07 PM PST by Reily
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To: goodnesswins

But it took a black man going to court to make it legal!

BTW: He and his son both owned White slaves!


70 posted on 02/26/2021 9:35:56 PM PST by justme4now (Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it)
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To: Reily

The Romans did not let their slaves wear distinctive clothing or marks because they feared a revolt if the slaves realized they outnumbered the masters.


71 posted on 02/26/2021 9:39:10 PM PST by Harmless Teddy Bear (May their path be strewn with Legos, may they step on them with bare feet until they repent. )
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To: Harmless Teddy Bear

That’s interesting, I always thought the opposite.

Because there were later laws in Middle Ages regarding the types of clothing the classes could wear.


72 posted on 02/26/2021 9:43:46 PM PST by Reily
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To: justme4now

Yes I think his name was Anthony Johnson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Johnson_(colonist)


73 posted on 02/26/2021 9:49:49 PM PST by Reily
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To: Reily
Nope.

Freed slaves would wear a soft cap to show they were free but the still enslaved had to dress like everybody else. Just no Togas. You had to be a free born citizen to wear that. But since there were a whole bunch of people in Rome who were not citizens and lots of citizens did not wear togas unless it was a very formal occasion that was not a notable sign.

74 posted on 02/26/2021 9:53:03 PM PST by Harmless Teddy Bear (May their path be strewn with Legos, may they step on them with bare feet until they repent. )
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To: goodnesswins
IIRC Aesop, a Greek, was a slave. This from around 560 BC.

Seems he wrote some famous fables ...

75 posted on 02/27/2021 12:55:36 AM PST by jamaksin ( )
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To: grundle
"Most college students think America invented slavery, professor finds"

The Egyptian pyramids were built by union laborers until they went on strike. Pharaoh fired them and they were replaced by scab labor from Angie's list.(/sarc)
76 posted on 02/27/2021 1:03:19 AM PST by clearcarbon (Fraudulent elections have consequences.)
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To: grundle

Public school system void of history


77 posted on 02/27/2021 4:54:16 AM PST by ronnie raygun
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To: grundle
As their teachers have taught these students through high school. And those teachers have come to their 'knowledge' from their peers, teachers and, of course, their mighty union. And it goes back another 2-3 generations!

Actually, if a present day teacher taught the FACT that British North America & the United States of America was the destination of a mere 4% of the Atlantic Slave Trade, they would be corrected and probably punished if not fired!

78 posted on 02/27/2021 5:40:13 AM PST by SES1066 (I love my Country, but I fear too much Government!)
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To: Bull Snipe

It was mostly blacks who enslaved them in the first place.


79 posted on 02/27/2021 5:51:20 AM PST by Blood of Tyrants (DemocRats would burn the country to the ground to be absolute rulers over the ashes.)
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To: Blood of Tyrants

In this country it was whites that bought most of them


80 posted on 02/27/2021 7:21:29 AM PST by Bull Snipe
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