Not yet forgotten, the 'greatest generation' finally set in stone

Critics blame teaching - or the absence of teaching - for such historical amnesia. None of the top 50 US colleges or universities now requires American history to graduate," says Anne Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. "So, the likelihood of the next generation of leaders having a full understanding of the World War II period is very small."

Moreover, the way the war is taught in contemporary textbooks often gives greater emphasis to Rosie the Riveter and the Japanese internment camps than to the epic struggle between democracy and fascism. Today's teachers and textbook writers tend to view World War II through the lens of the Vietnam War, says education historian Diane Ravitch, and it colors textbooks, test questions, and college courses.

"Many students never get to learn about the purposes of World War II. It's been reduced to coverage about race, class, and gender," Ms. Ravitch says. "The only strong image that many kids have of World War II from their textbooks is the [US] Japanese internment camps. They don't know about Pearl Harbor, Nanking, or the Bataan death march."

Hollywood films, such as "Saving Private Ryan," substitute somewhat for what kids are not picking up in their textbooks. But even the big screen doesn't replace the power of living through the experience.

"People don't remember the historical importance of World War II, or that it was a great war for democracy. They remember it in terms of their personal experience: a man that was injured in North Africa or a wife that had to bring up the children alone," says Howard Schuman, research scientist at the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center.

"I'm surprised anyone younger than 50 would know anything other than big events that are commemorated. That's why they're building the monument," he adds.

The focus of this study is on the importance of personal experience: People tend to remember what directly affects them, and if it doesn't affect them directly it has much less of an impression. The most important time to be affected is, roughly, between the ages of 13 and 26, he says.

That means that, in addition to collective memory, there is also collective forgetting. Watergate, the cold war, and even the end of the cold war, are already sinking into oblivion in the minds of most Americans, he says.

"One of the most striking things is how few people have anything to say about the cold war or end of the cold war. It's almost forgotten, or probably will be in a very short time. The Berlin Wall for most young people is already ancient history, and unless they've specialized in history they're not going to know anything about it.

But the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are shining a brighter light on World War II, he adds - a point he'll make in a survey to be published this summer in Public Opinion Quarterly. In 1985 and 2000, the Survey Research Center asked national samples to "name one or two national or world events that occurred over the past 50 years that seemed to you especially important." In 1985, World War II was at the top of the list for 30 percent - a number that fell to 20 percent in 2000.

But three months after the 9/11 attacks, 28 percent cited World War II. Schuman calls it "a resurrected event."

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