A Country That Doesn't Know its History is Ripe for the Picking

What happens when a nation stops teaching its own history?

In this powerful episode, Mark Mansour takes you deep into the crisis unfolding in American classrooms — where civics is forgotten, books are banned, and history is being rewritten. From Florida’s sweeping censorship laws to the collapse of basic civic knowledge, we connect the dots between educational neglect and the rise of authoritarianism in America.

Donald Trump didn’t create this vacuum. He stepped into it. And he’s not alone.

Why can’t half of Americans name the three branches of government?

Why are schools across the country banning books by Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood?

And how does a generation without history become the perfect target for propaganda?

This isn’t just an education crisis. It’s a democracy crisis. And it’s not coming—it’s here.

Tune in to America’s Fractured Politics and find out why remembering our past may be the most radical act of resistance we have left.

Subscribe now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

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Welcome to America's Fractured Politics. This is a podcast for people who still believe that facts matter, for people who believe that policy has consequences, and for people who understand deep down that democracy, even when imperfect, even when battered and bruised, is still worth fighting for. I'm your host, mark Mansour. I'm an attorney and I've spent my career at the intersection of law, policy and politics. I've worked in government, I've worked in private practice, I've worked in advocacy. I. And what I've seen over and over again is that what happens in the back rooms of Congress, the fine print of legislation, shapes, lives in ways that most people will never see coming. This podcast isn't about the noise. It's not about the horse race. It's not about the latest outrage cycle on cable news. It's about substance. It's about what's happening beneath the surface. The bills that pass in the shadows, the ideologies that drive them, and the human beings, they affect. Today's episode isn't just about politics. It's about something deeper. It's about memory, identity, the story we tell ourselves about who we are and how increasingly that story is being erased. Not forgotten by accident, but deliberately buried in classrooms across America. History is disappearing, sanitized for controversy or pushed aside entirely. Civics has become a relic. Social studies almost gone. And the result is a generation of Americans growing up ignorant of the very story that shaped their rights, their responsibilities, and their place in the world. That vacuum didn't just happen. It was engineered and into that vacuum stepped Donald Trump. To understand the rise of Trump and the continued hold he has on a significant portion of the electorate, we have to confront a hard truth. This country has grown dangerously ignorant of its own past, and that ignorance isn't just unfortunate. It's strategic, it's profitable, it's political, and it's deeply profoundly dangerous. Let's start with the numbers. In the most recent national assessment of educational progress, what some call the Nation's report card, only 14% of eighth graders were deemed proficient in the US history. 14%. That's the lowest score ever recorded in civics. A 2022 survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that less than half of Americans could name all three branches of government. One in former couldn't name any. And when asked whether the Constitution allows the President to ignore a Supreme Court ruling, a majority didn't know the answer. Historical ignorance runs even deeper. And a 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center. A significant percentage of adults could not identify key facts about the Civil War, the Cold War, or the Holocaust. A 2023 poll found that 45% of American adults couldn't name a single concentration camp, and 60% didn't know how many Jews were killed during the Holocaust. These are not minor lapses. They're fundamental gaps in moral and civic knowledge openings that make citizens vulnerable to demagoguery propaganda and the appeal of authoritarian strong men. Okay. Donald Trump didn't cause his vacuum, but he exploited it masterfully. And a country where fewer and fewer people can distinguish fact from myth where history has been replaced by slogans and where civic knowledge is treated as elitist. Trump's culture of nationalism and grievance finds fertile soil. When voters don't know what fascism looks like, they're less likely to recognize its early symptoms when they can't recall the dangers of unchecked executive power. They're more likely to cheer it on. It's not hard to draw the line from educational neglect to political dysfunction. The less Americans know about the constitution, the more willing they are to believe that it permits things like banning entire religions or prosecuting political opponents, or refusing to concede elections. The fewer people who understand how McCarthyism destroyed lives or how Jim Crow disenfranchised an entire race. The easier it is to resurrect those tactics under new names. This is no accident in red states across the country. Republican lawmakers are working to further restrict the teaching of history. They pass laws banning, quote unquote divisive concepts, rewriting curricula to exclude systemic racism, slavery, or the struggle for civil rights. Florida, Texas and other conservative strongholds have mandated so-called quote unquote patriotic education, which white washes our past in favor of a sanitized feel good narrative that erases conflict pain and the hard won gains of marginalized communities. Trump himself launched the 1776 Commission, a direct rebuke to the New York Times 1619 project, which aimed to replace historical inquiry with state-sponsored myth making. This is all about control. It's about building a citizenry that is pliable, misinformed, and suspicious of expertise. A public that doesn't know what happened yesterday is easy to lie to today, and that is precisely the environment Trump thrives in. His rise was made possible not only by rage and racism, but by ignorance cultivated and celebrated. A public stripped of its historical. Literacy is a public ripe for manipulation. The data backs this up. A 2023 PRRI poll found that Americans who believed the US was founded as a Christian nation were significantly more likely to support Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Many didn't know or refuse to believe that the Constitution expressly forbids religious tests for office. Another poll from the University of Chicago found that a belief in Q Anon style conspiracy theories. Was closely correlated with low levels of civic knowledge. In short, the less history you know, the more likely you are to believe that Trump won the election. The Democrats drink children's blood, or that the founders wanted guns. In every church. Trump's political genius lies not in persuasion, but in replacement, replacing knowledge with narrative. Truth, with spectacle. He doesn't argue, he asserts, he doesn't cite history. He invents it. He doesn't honor the rule of law. He mocks it. And in a country where many schools no longer teach the full scope of slavery, reconstruction, the labor movement, the internment of Japanese Americans, or the rise of European fascism, those lies go unchallenged. It's no wonder then that Trump has made war on education itself from calling teachers left wing indoctrinated to threatening federal funding for schools that teach critical race theory, which virtually none of them do. By the way, he has identified the classroom as a threat to his power. And he is not wrong. An educated public, one that understands the Emancipation Proclamation, the Voting Rights Act, the Nuremberg Trials or the Watergate hearings is a public that might see through him. That's why history must be distorted, censored, or removed. This is classic authoritarianism. It doesn't begin with tanks in the streets. It begins with the erosion of truth. It begins with the discrediting of teachers, the banning of books, the silencing of historians. It begins with the loss of a shared narrative, a sense of where we've been and who we are. And once that narrative is gone, anything can be invented in its place. Trump Myth of Great America. Before the fall, a paradise lost to immigrants and feminists and climate scientists only work if people don't know what actually happened in our past, even in our recent past, since 2021, Florida has led the nation in aggressively removing books from school libraries. In the 20 23, 20 24 school year alone, the Florida Department of Education reported that over 700 books were removed or discontinued from local districts. Penn America estimates that Florida accounted for nearly half of all book removals nationally, around 4,500 books, including classics like Slaughterhouse Five. The Bluest Eye and Beloved were all banned, but it gets darker still. Meet Bruce Friedman dubbed the Michael Jordan of book Banning Over two and a half years. Friedman is personally challenged around 1200 books averaging nearly one per day with authors like Margaret Atwood and Tony Morrison. Among his targets, he argues his purge protects children, yet studies from Penn, America and Florida freedom to read a point to a growing climate of climates, fear and stress among educators and librarians. To make such purges easier. Florida passed HB 10 69, requiring districts to report on challenged books and allowing parents or residents to initiate disputes and later tightening limits on those challenges. Ironically, restricting challenges by keeping complaints to one per month. Yet for those determined like Friedman, this is merely a hurdle to overcome. Meanwhile, lawsuits have erupted. In early 2024, John Green, Jodi Ult, and several major publishers through Florida, arguing that HB 10 60 nine's vague language led to constitutional censorship and harmed students access to diverse perspectives. All this postures as a fight against pornography or wake ideology. In practice, it erases narratives about race, gender, sexuality, and ultimately America's history itself. What chance then do students have of recognizing authoritarian patterns when they've never learned about the internment of Japanese Americans, Jim Crow, or the Holocaust? In 2022, the eighth grade cohort scored the lowest in US history and dropped to the first ever decline in civics since NAEP. Began tracking it in 1998. Only 13 to 14% scored at or above NAEP proficiency for US History, 22% for civics of even greater concern. Roughly one third of the eighth graders are below the basic levels in civics. Unable to identify the three branches of government. 40% are below basic in history. Failing to grasp simple historical concepts. These declines aren't anomalies. NAEP history scores have been falling steadily since 2014, and civic scores hovered flat until a dramatic dip in 2022. Widen the lens. 2020 Pew Surveys revealed. Many adults couldn't identify basic facts about the Civil War, cold War, or the Holocaust. This didn't begin with Common Core or culture wars. Heritage dating back to the 1950s. The golden age of civics and post-war schools has eroded in the 1950s and sixties, history and civics oriented students toward national identity, global responsibility, and civic duty. Fueled by the Cold War on the launch of Sputnik in 1957. That event spurred a nation at risk in 1983, which highlighted academic decline. And called for a national recommitment to social studies and critical thinking. Despite ways of reform, history, and civics gradually lost priority after no children left behind. In 2001, emphasis shifted toward math and reading. By 2012, only 39 of the 50 states required a dedicated civics or government course. Fewer than eight required a state mandated test. Consequently, NAPP results is stagnated. In 2010, just 24% of all students were proficient in civics, and that percentage hasn't improved significantly. Today's federal efforts like we, the people in iCivics, founded that in 2009 by Justice Sadr Day O'Connor produce active learning via simulations and games. Icis now reaches about 25% of high school government and history teachers, but state and district level defunding bans and pushback make, keeping these resources an uphill battle. What we see in Florida isn't unique. Starting in 2021, a wave of book bans and curriculum censorship has hit states like Iowa, Texas, Arizona, and Tennessee. Hundreds of books have been challenged in broad campaigns, get targeting race or race, plus gender and sexuality. They began in local school boards that escalated with state level intervention into laws like Arkansas's, critical race theory bans, Florida Stop Woke, act, and Bans on the 1619 project in Mississippi. Iowa and elsewhere. These laws aren't about academic standards. They're about control over our collective memory. They're signals. Don't ask questions. Don't challenge us. Don't teach about oppression or systemic harm. Instead, learn that America is pure. Learn that questioning the founders is unpatriotic. Learn the truth is what we say it is. Why worry if they remove some books or shift curriculum focus because as our earlier statistics make painfully clear. This is us. We are the generation. We're only 14% score proficient in history. Where half don't know the three branches of government. And this vacuum Trump's message travels, unchallenged slogans, replace structural law, grievances replace policy. Spectacle replaces substance. Trump doesn't debate you. He drowns you in repetition. He doesn't teach history. He invents it. He doesn't stand by the rule of law. He undermines it. And the less known about McCarthyism, Watergate, internment Camps or Jim Crow, the less we see the echoes of authoritarianism in real time, we become ripe for exploitation. This isn't theoretical, it's urgent. We need federal investment in social studies. Treat it like STEM post put, require high school civics in history. Allocate funding expand. NAEP, defend academic freedom. Or sport lawsuits like those in Florida, empower Advocacy groups, fund Penn, America and Florida. Freedom to Read, run for school boards. These battles start local. We need truth tellers in our classrooms. Empower teachers, race, pay fund, training, protect, innovative civics education, push back on book bands, show up, speak out. Demand history that reflects who we really are. Because democracy doesn't function without constant nurturing. It must be taught, it must be learned, it must be earned. We began by asking how Trump maintains this grip. Now we know he didn't create ignorance, he exploited it and deepened it, but we can resist. We can teach. We can remember, as Lincoln once said, the philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government and the next, so let's teach the truth. Let's remember who we are. This has been America's Fractured Politics. I'm Mark Mansour. Don't forget, don't be silent and never stop learning.