This has been building for a while. Around 81 I used the saying like Grant took Richmond to a charming young lady who was getting her degree in social work. She was embarrassed and said that she knew that Grant and Lee fought in the Civil War but she wasn’t sure which sides they fought on. I would note that this was not my Bride, who I met in 82, and who was much better versed in history. People who do not know their nation’s history are easy marks for demagogues pushing magical thinking as solutions to the woes of this Vale of Tears.
PA state history was required in grad school and US history in high school and at college (Caltech). what has happened since then?
that is after the 1940’s and 50’s?
“About” a hundred years ago, same way that the US is “about” two hundred years old– which I have heard from supposedly serious folks.
He’s probably younger than me, but if his education on the Civil War was the same as mine, of course he doesn’t know any names of leaders. He might know Harriet Tubman, and a great deal about how dumb and horrible the US is for existing.
We didn’t even get any kind of thing like “Lincoln was the first Republican president.”
The timeline of American history should be mastered in elementary school, age 8-10 for the most adept students, beginning later for slower students, and finishing by age 13 or 14 for any student not consigned to remedial classes in their adolescent years. High school should be devoted to academic study for about 40% of the student body, vocational-technical study for about 40%, and remedial study for about 20%. We don’t have the excuse that these people were not taking academic classes because only about 6% of our secondary school teaching manpower is devoted to vocational-technical instruction. It’s just slatternliness on the part of all parties which generates this situation. If you remember that the purpose of a school is to provide salaries to people who pretend to teach and administrators who pretend to provide infrastructure and them and monitor their activities, it makes sense. If you fancy the purpose is to actually teach the young something, you’ll be very confused.
Don’t knock the young fellow. It sounds like he’s learning just what they want him to learn. As I’ve said, our schools have either failed miserably, or succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Not sure which.
When I was 13 and in seventh grade, a rather miserable experience, we were required to take a semester of Ohio history.
Almost all of Ohio was part of Virginia before 1803, with a sliver of Northeast Ohio claimed by Connecticut. Ohio has virtually no colonial history.
In the South Fayette Twp, PA school.district, there is NO Pennsylvania history class.
Pennsylvania history goes back to 1681. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Mason Dixon Line, the first United States capital, the French and Indian War, Valley Forge, the Whiskey Rebellion, Gettysburg, the Homestead riots (an indirect ancestor of mine, John McLuckie, worked at Carnegie Steel and was Homestead mayor at the time), Carnegie, Frick, the rise and later fall of the steel industry, the Turnpike, and so much more is NOT TAUGHT at all. What a waste.
Don’t knock the young fellow. It sounds like he’s learning just what they want him to learn.
Oh, he is worthy of knocking Dave because it is so easy to learn on your own today. Bad schools are only part of the problem. The main problem is too many students are lazy beyond belief.
Dave G is correct … As far as public education goes, this is a feature, not a bug.
the Immaculate Conception does not share our ignorance. The Blessed Virgin Mary has full knowledge and informed consent.The darkness of mind is from original sin. Mary maintained her original innocence. Jesus did not suffer ignorance.
I am convinced that there was a deliberate psy op to get young people to ignore the past that started in schools around the turn of the millennium. I first observed this by seeing the viewing habits of children in terms of movies. For those born in the 70’s or 80’s it was never considered strange to watch a movie from 20, 30 or even 40+ years ago. If the VHS looked neat, you’d rent it anyway. I think pretty much everyone from that age bracket saw the Wizard of Oz (1939) and it should be remembered that the universally seen Star Wars (1977) came out before much of that age bracket would have been old enough to see it in theaters. But when you start getting people born in the 90’s and especially around the turn of the millennium, they act like it is bizarre to have seen anything from before you were born. I saw this a lot in defenses of the Disney remakes “I think my kids would like the Lion King, but it’s SO OLD and they would never watch it; so I’m glad that Disney remade it!”
Rudolph, one of my sons took a college class on cinema as an elective. For one of the papers, the professor assigned a film review. Pick any film – any film at all – and write a review. My son and one other student were the only two to review a movie made before 2000. And that other one was The Princess Bride. His professor praised my son, saying it had been a long time since anyone who did that assignment picked a film before 1980. I’ve noticed that since the dawn of the Internet Age. First it was ‘the past is so stupid’, then it was ‘who cares about the past at all’. My generation loved old movies, and we knew the old movie stars, musicians and songs and movies. Today? Almost anything before 1992 seems to be worthless. FWIW, my son in that class reviewed The Third Man, with Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles and Trevor Howard..
What do you expect when kids are getting their information (history included) off Tiktok and Instagram.
In my neck of the woods, when I was at school ALL of my bibliography for my assignments had to come from hard copy books (some online encyclopaedias were permitted), which cited credible sources. Online websites as sources were NOT permitted because they knew back then that the content and publications were not reviewed or verified as credible.
Fast forward the 2000’s and my eldest high schooler was allowed to use “certain” online sources (approved by the teacher) for her assignments when she was in elementary school. Most had to be hard copy books from the library with publication dates.
Her sister who is now in elementary school is now allowed to use ANY online sources, besides Wikipedia, for assignments.
Who is checking that the online content these children are using as sources is credible?
The problem is the internet has ALOT of content and unless you have a full-time marshall or a sane adult to guide the child so they can filter through the misinformation, then kids are going to learn stupid inaccurate “history”. Off Tiktok, off movies and off any social media and online platform.
Reliance on online content is laziness and that is the culprit here. Kids have access to ALOT of information. ALOT.
George Santanya.
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