Newly released data from the National Center for Education Statistics reveal that only 13% — 13%! — of students nationwide meet proficiency standards in U.S. history and civics. This troubling news comes on the heels of recently released data by the National Assessment of Educational Progress that revealed the largest drop in math proficiency ever recorded, as well as drastic declines in reading. The inability of the vast majority of U.S. students to understand the significance of our nation’s most important historical events, as well as basic facts related to how the government functions, is evidence of an ongoing national disaster on a scale perhaps never before seen.

It goes without saying that the state of global democracy is fragile and that both totalitarian and authoritarian forces are lurking . The U.S., which boasts the world’s greatest military and economy (though China is rapidly gaining ground in both respects), is global democracy’s last line of defense. As such, the pitiful state of American education is not primarily a moral crisis, or even an economic crisis, but a security crisis on an international scale. In the coming years, U.S. citizens, and indeed, citizens of the global democratic West, will be faced with the harrowing reality of having to rely upon a functionally illiterate generation of Americans — illiterate in the sense of reading in general as well as of history — to muster the competence and resolve necessary to defend the free world.

In retrospect, it makes perfect sense why so many young people today have been willing to set the nation and its cultural institutions ablaze. It’s because they have no idea what they are torching in the first place. A recent Morning Consult poll found that only 16% of Gen Z is “proud to live in the United States,” which corresponds almost perfectly to the 13% of students who understand the basics of our history and system of government. It stands to reason that the few who are able to place the U.S. in proper historical context, as well as understand the genius of its governing structures, develop a natural patriotism and reverence. Meanwhile, the ignorant majority feel no conviction toward the country either way.

That’s because they have no idea how miraculous and unlikely its founding was (all they do know about it is that it supposedly took place in 1619, not 1776). While young people purport to oppose tyranny, they don’t realize that the American Revolution effectively signaled the downfall of monarchy as the dominant system of human government. They purport to promote equality, but they don’t realize that approximately 360,000 Union soldiers died to end slavery and preserve the Union. And although they are deeply aware of America’s sins, particularly slavery (as they should be — the truth of such a sin demands endless confrontation), they are entirely ignorant of the sins of America’s greatest geopolitical foes, and this renders them pathologically ungrateful for the freedom and prosperity they enjoy. Too many students have never heard of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and so they are entirely ignorant of the ways in which their preferred social movements mimic it every day . They couldn’t tell you what a gulag was, not even if they had the benefit of multiple choice.

Of course, this isn’t their fault. They only know what they’ve been taught. And the truth is that they’ve been taught by teachers who were trained by an overwhelmingly leftist professoriate under the supervision of an overwhelmingly leftist university administration complex . With more and more time devoted to leftist moral instruction, otherwise known as social emotional learning, and more emphasis on ideological purity (framing history through an “equity lens,” for example), which suppresses critical engagement with ideas and promotes self-censorship , it is surprising that even 13% of students are proficient in history and civics.

It's difficult to believe there is still time to turn the ship of education around because it appears to have sunk. The only question that remains is whether or not we've reached the bottom yet. Perhaps only then will we be willing and able to rebuild an education system that is capable of preserving the free world.

Peter Laffin is a contributor at the Washington Examiner and the founder of Crush the College Essay. His work has also appeared in RealClearPolitics, the Catholic Thing, the National Catholic Register, and the American Spectator.