The level of knowledge among many high school students about World War II is abysmal, historians say. The level of ignorance is pretty high. Pentagon officials who work with educators say the study of World War II often suffers because it comes late in the school year and is not given much emphasis. It's really kind of sad, because it's the pivotal event of the century. It's fallen off the education scope.
Educators acknowledge that history instruction needs to improve.
Virginia and the District established similar standards in 1997. The efforts by veterans groups to fill in some of the gaps may help, educators said. The visit by Morgan and two restored World War II bombers to Frederick during a recent autumn weekend was aimed at school groups and attracted hundreds of people who toured the planes and spoke with combat veterans who flew them. Schlag, president of the National Capital Chapter of the 8th Air Force Historical Society, spent weeks organizing the Frederick event for a simple reason. The 8th Air Force, which launched thousands of bombing missions into Nazi-held Europe from bases in England, suffered more than 26,000 men killed in action, and some of them were his friends.