selective history

Interesting survey results from Sam Wineburg (Stanford) and Chauncey Monte-Sano (Maryland) to appear in the March issue of the Journal of American History (hat tip: Touchstone)...

Who are America's greatest heroes? When 2,000 high school students across the United States were asked this question—excluding presidents and presidents' wives—Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman headed the list. The only living American to make the top 10 was Oprah Winfrey, who ranked seventh. In short, the nation's leading heroes, in the eyes of its youth, are African Americans....

After King, Parks and Tubman, the list included Susan B. Anthony, Benjamin Franklin, Amelia Earhart, Oprah Winfrey, Marilyn Monroe, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein....

Why? We can't be sure, but Wineberg chooses the most obvious candidate.

Wineburg attributed the survey results, in part, to three decades of multicultural education—"an attempt to remedy the erasure of black Americans from the curriculum"—including such efforts as Black History Month in February.

"In that sense, this is a success story, given the kinds of criticism we heap on ourselves in terms of failed educational reform efforts," he said. "Here is an instance where schools have made major changes, and we see some of the effects of those changes in the survey."

Their methodology:

Wineburg and Monte-Sano polled 11th- and 12th-graders from public schools in each of the 50 states between March 2004 and May 2005, seeking schools that reflected the overall demographic profile of the region. The students were given the following prompt: "Starting from Columbus to the present day, jot down the names of the most famous Americans in history. The only ground rule is that they cannot be presidents."...

A second question asked the students to list the five most famous women in American history, excluding the wives of presidents. The top 10 list reflects the absolute number of times a person's name was written on the questionnaire, from either question, without regard to how the names were ranked. The survey, therefore, was weighted toward women, even though some students erased women's names from the first list before adding them to the second.

A weird and unnecessarily-inefficient methodology. Oh well...

Here are the differences by race:

The biggest differences among student responses were recorded between white and African American respondents, who represented 13 percent of the respondents (about 70 percent were white, 9 percent were Hispanic and 7 percent Asian American). Black students were nearly three times more likely to name King, twice as likely to name Tubman and Oprah Winfrey and 1.5 times as likely to name Parks. The black students' top 10 is dominated by nine African American names; the white students' top 10 comprises four African Americans (including the top three names) and six whites. Still, five names overlap in the top 10 list for both groups of teenagers: four African Americans—King, Tubman, Winfrey and Parks—and Susan B. Anthony.

As for the adults...

To compare the students' responses to adult responses, the researchers additionally surveyed 2,000 American-born adults ages 45 and older, surveying them in shopping centers, downtown pedestrian malls, hospitals, libraries, adult education classes, business meetings, street fairs and retirement communities....

The researchers found remarkable overlap in the adult and student groups. Students and adults listed eight of the same names in the top 10. For adults, however, Betsy Ross and Henry Ford topped Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe....