Special to The Times

The New York Times, a well-known metropolitan daily, does not consider crusading its forte. Yet in two pages of evidence spread proudly in last Sunday's issue, it warns that there exists "a striking ignorance of United States history" among American college freshmen. It does not bother to elaborate on what constitutes United States history.

The Times, with a straight face, expressed grave concern when less sixteen per cent of the 7000 freshmen tested failed to note that serving as President of the United States was one of the major contributions made by Thomas Jefferson to the political, economic or social development of the country. At many other points the questions were either irrelevant as indices of historical knowledge or were so insulting to the intelligence of those tested that they invoked nonsensical and ironic retorts rather than honest attempts to answer.

A framework of fact is necessary to more advanced study, but a good memory for names, dates, and places should not be considered the criterion of historical acumen. The Times test is weak in its exclusive attention to memory, and the conclusion drawn in its editorial, "that our high schools need better teaching in the subject," though it is probably accurate, is not supported by the mass of irrelevancies cited in its report.

It is not an insufficient knowledge of the names of the original thirteen colonies or of the career of Nicholas Biddle that is responsible for the lack of judgment at the ballot boxes displayed by large sectors of the American public. It would have taken more than a knowledge of which Presidents have been assassinated to save American public opinion from the almost tragic cancer of isolationism that afflicted it. Teaching methods are made the issue by the Times report, with the result that the importance of emphasis is ignored. The stress on social implications that has resulted in the substitution of "social sciences" for straight history in recent years has required some sacrifice of the little red schoolhouse emphasis on names, dates and places. But any absence of date by date knowledge of our history is more than compensated for by the greater comprehension of American industrial, social, and economic history which is the product of the progressive social science trend.