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Joined: Nov 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Ignorance of basic political facts is a disease which is spreading and has been for some time.
In NZ there is no standard civics course in high schools as in the States and social studies seems to concentrate on non-political issues. Most New Zealanders leave school appallingly ignorant of the political process which runs their country.
When I was teaching business studies as part of a computing course in a polytechnic way back when, I took the first two lectures and devoted them to teaching my students, mostly high school dropouts in their 20s, 30s and 40s, how governments work in general, how the New Zealand government works in particular and contrasting that with the US governmental system. When I taught them about the Westminster system, I was more than once accused of making it all up ...
Believe me, though, that was nothing in comparison with the disbelief that met my attempts to teach them about the double-entry bookkeeping system and how THAT came about!
I think there is a place for a compulsory civics course in every school in every country. I think that disinterest in the process in today's adults is a product of their ignorance of it. And of course they will pass this disinterest on to their progeny.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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I think that disinterest in the process in today's adults is a product of their ignorance of it.
I'm not so sure about that. Most kids here learn about how government works at some point or another, as part of a social studies course at school, but that doesn't seem to have done much for political awareness. (It's always funny on Canada Day when some news agency inevitably does a poll which shows that some small but embarrassing percentage of kids and adults think Canada has a president...)
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
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Jay Leno, on the tonight show, does a regular segment, "jay walking" during which he asks embaressingly simple questions, to people sometimes he has photographs of newsmakers-- US and international ones, sometimes real basic questions..
the week the movie "Pearl Harbor" opened, he asked people about it.. like "who bombed pearl harbor?" (the hawaians, the germans, the US, were some of the answers. and these were not just young people.. adults in their thirties and forties.
One question, asked of tourist to DC, on the mall, in sight of lincoln monument, was "which US president is credited with freeing the slaves?" the answers-- Duh? washington? duh? Jimmy carter?
Asked on July 4th-Why is today a holiday? what does it celebrate? Ans. Independence day.. when US became independant of england.. (jay pleased, asks a follow up question..) When was that? what year? Ans. 1918.
a classic question in NY is "who is buried in Grants tomb?"( a NY landmark) (the simple answer Grant,and many miss it, but points added if you know his wife and family including the family dog!)
i am pretty non political, and well, i know US history, and some english history, but don't consider my self really really good at history.. but to judge from Jay walking, i could hold a PhD compared to a lot of regular folk!
on the other hand, i sometimes realize that if everyone was as smart, and interested as i am, (and this crew here) no one would want to work at Kmart or costco, or pump gas, or collect trash, or cut hair..
there are lots of things in this world that don't require any great intellect. the things we hold near and dear, (language and words in particular, and everything else in general!) don't interest millions of people. they go about their lives, working at jobs that don't require much knowledge, and often even less intelligence, to earn money to buy things that they thing will give there live meaning
it is sometimes enought to make you wish for an intellectual aristocrisy to be running the world.
bread and circus were the romans way of keeping the masses entertained. today its cable TV and infomercial.
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Joined: Jan 2002
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veteran
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"The kids today are every bit as bright as the kids of fifty or more years ago"
Some people would say "even brighter" (Flynn effect).
k
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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only a very small minority of children understand the difference between "clockwise" and "counter- (anti-)clockwise,"
Knowing the concept and knowing those words are two different things. Do you know the difference between sungates and widdershins?
All I know is that the British didn't win the damn Viet Nam War!!
Do you know who won the War of 1812?
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Joined: Jan 2001
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who won the War of 1812?Well, here we are taught that Canada did, because you failed to take us over.  I'm told that in the US you don't see it as a Canada-vs-US war but a US-vs-Britain war. (Is that actually true? Anyone?) Anyway, the truth is more like it was a draw.
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
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veteran
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Dear FF: I assure you, anybody who drinks twelve ounces of wood alcohol is almost certain to become permanently blind.
Thanks for the info. I've always doubted the claim. I have a rather long story about the fellow who imparted that particulate of wisdom which terminates in his death by choking on his vomitus while drunk. No, I'm not making this up. There are stranger ironies even than this in the world.
And this is part of my problem with "common sense," that so much of it is nonsensical.
k
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Joined: Jan 2001
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Here, I found a nice web page about the War of 1812, with the Canadian interpretation of what happened, although for some reason it focusses on which historical figures got their faces on stamps. (Strange stuff you find on the web, really.) http://www.rpsc.org/Library/1812/warof1812.htmAnyway, for Canada the war was seen as affirmation that we did not wish to be absorbed into the US. Also, it was one of those events which solidified our concept of "nationhood" in that it was the first time that the English, French, and Indians got together and fought side-by-side against a common foe. From other things I've read I gather that the focus in the US is on the burning of the White House and the problem with Britain taking USn men into the navy by force. The attempt to "liberate" Canada from British control was retaliation for that. Funny how differently these things can be interpreted.
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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USns kind of slide over the fact that one of our objectives was to "liberate" Canada from the evil overlordship of Mother England. Certainly, from the US standpoint it was mostly a draw if you take that troublesome fact into account. Looking at it from a global scale (well, global if you don't count the majority of the globe who probably didn't even notice it was happening), USns were on the losing side. Not something that gets pointed out much in USn primary or secondary school history classes.
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Joined: Oct 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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there was a whole thread devoted to the war of 1812 back in June.. its just a side bar in this thread, but you might enjoy reading the discussion.. http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=miscellany&Number=32099part of the discussion was about the teaching of history, and other similar ideas... we can cross weave between the two threads...
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