History with Dr. Hawes

Ask a freshman college student that question and you’re likely to be told, “Because it’s required.” That’s a fair enough response when you consider the perspective of a student that is short of twenty years of age. What John W. Bohnstedt described as “present-mindedness” makes the Vietnam War no more relevant to them than the Civil War.[1] Those conflicts are stored away in a vault labeled “Pre-Me” along with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack, the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, the assassination of Kennedy, and Prohibition. Some students today get almost no exposure to history until they attend secondary education. The timeline of events prior to their birth is compressed into a dot that is devoid of relevance to their personal lives or world events. It is little wonder that the instructors of the American History and World Civilization courses required by liberal studies standards have difficulty sparking freshman interest.