Posted on 05/27/2002 6:51:49 AM PDT by Valin
Edited on 09/03/2002 4:50:34 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Academic spitballs are being flung across classrooms at the youth of America these days for their insufficient knowledge of history. Not that the youth of America particularly care. Their sense of history lasts as long as it takes to hit a remote control button. So the moment, and the criticism, will pass from their minds.
With the country at war in Afghanistan, and Washington issuing new terrorism threats, we have a new U.S. Department of Education report saying high school seniors compiled "truly abysmal scores" on the 2001 U.S. History Report Card.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
An educator I spoke with has a theory. Americans have a thirst, he said, for "utilitarian" knowledge. We have no patience for that business about yesteryear's troubles offering direct lessons for today's. We want to know things that are useful to us.
Obviously this 'educator' has no use for the lessons of history.
Maybe we need to teach history 'backwards'; this happened today because this happened the day before and so on back to the beginning, or as near to it as we can get.
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