Posted on 08/15/2013 8:14:21 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross
Today’s leaders are totally ignorant of what used to be the building blocks of learning.
In Sam Cooke’s classic 1959 hit “Wonderful World,” the lyrics downplayed formal learning with lines like, “Don’t know much about history . . . Don’t know much about geography.”
Over a half-century after Cooke wrote that lighthearted song, such ignorance is now all too real. Even our best and brightest — or rather our elites especially — are not too familiar with history or geography.
Both disciplines are the building blocks of learning. Without awareness of natural and human geography, we are reduced to a self-contained void without accurate awareness of the space around us. An ignorance of history also creates the same sort of self-imposed exile, leaving us ignorant of both what came before us and what is likely to follow.
In the case of geography, Harvard Law School graduate Barack Obama recently lectured, “If we don’t deepen our ports all along the Gulf — places like Charleston, South Carolina; or Savannah, Georgia; or Jacksonville, Florida . . . ” The problem is that all the examples he cited are cities on the East Coast, not the Gulf of Mexico. If Obama does not know where these ports are, how can he deepen them?
Obama’s geographical confusion has become habitual. He once claimed that he had been to all “57 states.” He also assumed that Kentucky was closer to Arkansas than it was to his adjacent home state of Illinois.
In reference to the Falkland Islands, President Obama called them the Maldives .......
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Harrison Ford sang along with the car radio in Witness
:)
Sadly schools are not teaching old fashion geography either. They are teaching sociology and demographics and calling it geography.
My older sons loved old fashioned maps, as do I, but my middle girls not so much and cannot tell you where some states are, much less countries. They cannot name 4 or 5 major rivers in the US but make straight A’s in “geography”.
Happily that was rectified when we left public skrewl a couple years ago.
Skill in politics will get your butt into a seat at the table.
The problem is that the people who end up with seats at the table do not have to be smart, or competent, or principled. The only thing they know how to do is get a seat at the table.
And then it's time to party, because the work has been accomplished!
IRS in general:
In y lifetime, I have receivd 5 or 6 notices from the IRS that I owed money, only to get “never mind” notices momths later because they missed something.
1) Schools don't educate people as well as they should.
2) The government is not likely to be staffed by educated people, even if we had a surplus of such educated people.
We're screwed.
Fortunately there is no spelling test
I think the rule is that liberals don’t have to know any of this stuff. Nor do they have to know how to spell. But if a Republican misspells potato, he will be crucified for such a major crime. That’s how it works. Liberals can say and do anything and spout factual errors, and nothing will be said. The same for a conservative results in liberal meltdown mode and talk of how stupid such conservative is.
OweBowMao will go down in history for building the intercontinental railroad.
“If Obama does not know where these ports are, how can he deepen them?”
You can fill the universe with what “O” does NOT know. His lack of basic education is apparent in everything he says and is not limited to a weakness in the understanding of geography.
If you cannot READ and/or have NEVER understood what is WORTH reading.... (not EVEN basics-as this author suggests) then your lack of understanding is character-wide and profound.
EVERYTHING in your character/personality is stunted and deformed by this lack of mature understanding, functional knowledge and basic perspective.
If you are a person who was permitted to slide-by throughout your entire educational career, with only a cursory exposure to basics, it’s the same as building a house on sand. Every where and at all times, the building lacks structural integrity.
“O” continually gives himself away on this. His ‘education’ was exceedingly compromised and whole swaths of basic and fundamental information were ignored.
It shows.
He is very like all the young people I know who are smart–mouthed but not smart.
Some people are born stupid; some people go to school for it.
I’m stumped. I don’t get the joke.
Eh ???
Harrison Ford ???
Singing ???
*THUD* ???
Yes “THUD”. ;) SHEESH!
*SIGH*
:)
What's even worse is that he doesn't know that he doesn't know, and there is absolutely no on in his inner circle who will tell him other-wise. Any one outside the circle that points out a mistake is simply and can be ignored, because their view point is biased.
That should read...”. Any one outside the circle that points out a mistake is simply (insert meme of the day) and can be ignored, because their view point is biased.”
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