This Is The Future

Don't sweat it. TBF's a smartass to everyone.

 

I'm no such thing. Just thought it was funny that he was handing out criticism to the school system with grammar like that.

 

I've always contended history needs to be taught in how events relate to each other throughout history -- ie. how one event, say the Gutenberg Press, which led to more people having access to the bible, as well as other classical works, which caused other changes in how Europeans lived their lives -- rather than a straight chronological form.
It's important to know when things happened, to be able to place events in the proper time period.
But it's far more important to know how events effect how our lives and affect change.
[Even if I, for the life of me, can't figure out the difference between effect and affect.
Hope I used them right.]

The problem with chronology is we spend plenty of time on the early years: Columbus, settlers. the Revolution, the Civil War, etc. Then, come March, we speed through the World Wars, and then go right from WWII to the present in about three weeks. Skews our understanding of history.

 

I'll echo the thoughts on "dated" history vs. recent history and relate my own personal story.

My wife loved her history teacher in high school, used to talk all the time about how great a teacher he was. One night we were driving in the car, and somehow the topic of Tianamen (sp?) Square came up. My wife had no idea what it was. Not the first clue.

Which launched an hours-long argument about the merits of said history teacher.

 

Why is this surprising? The American public education system is an abject failure.
Americans are not getting a thorough education.
Geography, English grammar, general literacy, the founding fathers, MLK, WWII, math, science, civics, ancient history, reason, logic, critical thinking — Very few people are learning any of it.

 

I graduated from college in 1988, and I'd say by 1990 I'd concluded that a bachelor degree for my generation was about the same as graduating from high school was for my parents' generation. When they finished hs, you had to go to college to get ahead. When I finished college, you had to go to grad school to get ahead.

 

Unfortunately many schools have become victims of "teaching to the (standardized) tests." If it's not on the state competency test, it doesn't see the light of day. I've had more than a few discussions with my wife about how the latter half of the 20th century gets glossed over so fast in history classes these days.

"Class, we only have one more week of school left in the year, so let's thumb through the last 7 chapters of your U.S. history book ... World War II - Pearl Harbor was really bad. Harry Truman said "The Buck Stops Here." And Dewey almost defeated him in the election. JFK was assassinated. Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream Speech" in Washington. Nixon resigned the presidency after something called the Watergate scandal. There was a Cold War. OK, there's the bell. Well, have a good summer and those of you who didn't pass your standardized tests, I'll see you next year."

 

It's a long standing problem of priority. We decided the function of the education system was socialization instead of education.
Even now, I think much of the focus on what American kids know or don't know with regard to recent U.S. history — WWII, MLK, etc. — is an issue of socialization and enculturation rather than an issue of real education. People are concerned that kids don't know things that should be important instead of being concerned that kids have not been taught to think, reason or apply logic, that they haven't been taught how to seek and process information they want or need, that they can't disinguish between information that is useful/important/relevant, and that they don't know how to apply what they have managed to glean.

 

No Child Left Behind = No Child knows a damn thing about history

 

Before work this morning I watching a documentary on Emmitt Till that I'd been meaning to catch for a couple of months.

The girls at work didn't know who he was.

Also, one thought we'd hung Osama instead of Saddam. The other didn't realized they'd hung anybody.

 

I was in college before I ever had a history class that covered events more recent than the Civil War.

 

I learned some about WWII in high school, but nothing more than D-Day.