Are you smarter than Mrs. B's students?

The stupidity. It's relentless.

From the you-can't-make-this-shit-up file, Mrs. Birdscribe is grading her summer school finals from the U.S. History class she teaches at a local community college. Here are some of the gems from this crop of Wonderlichs...

One student asked -- with a perfectly straight face -- "When was the War of 1812?" Not to be outdone, she came back during a discussion on Civil War tactics with this pearl of wisdom: "How do they get guerrillas to fight?"

On the ID/MATCHING portion, part A was "On Jan. 1 1863, this strengthened the moral cause and diplomatic position of the Union." To which, this budding Stephen Hawking glanced over "Emancipation Proclamation" and answered "Compromise of 1850."

Fill in this blank: "The Confederate general killed at the Battle of Chancellorsville..." Abraham Lincoln.

Fill in this blank: "The general who led the March to the Sea..." Robert E. Lee.

During a class discussion, Mrs. B asks "How old is the United States." One future Stephen Ambrose responds "Oh, about 150 years old."

Their semester assignment is do a Hollywood vs. History assignment on a list of historical movies from the period 1877-present. She gave them a list of pertinent movies for them to assess how close to the historical reality they were.

Noticeably absent from the list were the following films: "You've Got Mail", "Napoleon Dynamite", "Must Love Dogs", "Another Gay Movie", and "Eurotrip". Naturally, one of the Doris Kearns Goodwins in training decides to go off-the-board and review all of the above.

She's got more from earlier semesters that her current disgusted state precludes her from recalling, but you get the rather bleak idea.

To paraphrase Fenian, "Yahweh wept."

 

"What?!? The United States existed before I was born?"

 

Didn't even get past this one before laughing.

 

Newspaper upper management in the making.

 

I used to have students say that to me all the time.

"Why do we have to read this? It was written before we were born."

They had no idea why that would upset me, either.

 

Sounds like future guests for Jay Leno's Jaywalking segment.

 

I weep for the future. I need to go elsewhere before I get snooty.

 

Sounds like a there's a future president somewhere in that class.

 

I minored in history, so I took three on Britain. It's OK, at least I don't have to worry about these morans pushing me out of a job in 20 years ... wait ...

 

Me too.

 

I will say there were three of the questions on there that I wouldn't have had the slightest clue about.

Then again, I didn't just finish the class, and had one U.S. history class in all of my schooling, none after sophomore year of HS.

 

Concur. I probably know American history better than the average Yank. Where does the word Cajun come from?

That said ...

Sheesh, and to think our parents thought we were stupid!