THOSE WHO ARE IGNORANT OF HISTORY, ETC. ETC.: People who follow things like curriculum development in America’s elementary and secondary schools, as well as its colleges and universities, have warned for decades about the declining quality of history courses. Sadly, that’s not an issue with much mass impact.

But John Daniel Davidson has some data that brings home in a vivid manner the results of the decline over time — far fewer Americans are visiting civil war battlefields, which means they aren’t thinking and talking about the issues that produced that conflict at the heart of the American experience.

“The danger here is not just that Civil War battlefields will eventually lie fallow for lack of visitors, but that we will unlearn the painful lessons of our past. To some extent, we’ve already started down that path,” Davidson writes. Think of the growing number of racially segregated programs and facilities on elite campuses. Trust me, nothing good will come of this trend.