And yet another Home School energizer...

Again from Instapundit we're linked to Give This 'Attic' A Story To Tell, by Anne Applebaum, and We Are Our History - Don't Forget It, by David Gelernter. Applebaum laments on how the Smithsonian Musuem of American History has become a pop culture stop vs. an education stop for American History. She writes,

When the museum was built in 1964, this sort of thing probably wasn't necessary. But judging from a group of teenagers whom I recently heard lapse into silence when asked if they could identify Lewis and Clark, I suspect it's now very necessary indeed. Opinion polls bear out my suspicions. According to one poll, more U.S. teenagers can name the Three Stooges than the three branches of government. Even fewer can state the first three words of the Constitution. A San Francisco reporter once did an informal survey of teenagers watching Fourth of July fireworks in a park and found that only half could name the country from which the United States had won its independence. ("Japan or something, China," said one seventh-grader. "Somewhere out there on the other side of the world.") We're not talking about ignorance of semi-obscure facts here: We're talking about ignorance of basic information.

Gelernter writes,

To forget your own history is (literally) to forget your identity. By teaching ideology instead of facts, our schools are erasing the nation's collective memory. As a result, some "expert" can go on TV and announce (20 minutes into the fighting) that Afghanistan, Iraq or wherever "is the new Vietnam" — and young people can't tell he is talking drivel.

Indeed. While Home Schooling is not the only avenue in which parents can rightfully inform their children about American History, it certainly provides a wonderful opportunity to steer young minds away from apathetic ignorance and towards responsible knowledge.