Survey Finds Teenagers Ignorant on Basic History and Literature Questions

By SAM DILLON
Published: February 27, 2008

Fewer than half of American teenagers who were asked basic history and literature questions in a phone survey knew when the Civil War was fought, and one in four said Columbus sailed to the New World some time after 1750, not in 1492.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/us/27history.html?em&ex=1204261200&en=1f87c3c0567ec3b4&ei=5087%0A

From HERE (http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/014305.html)

One example among many.

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/Cover%20of%20Making%20Europe%20textbook.jpg
(Houghton Mifflin, 2007)


Now, we know that some corporate marketeer did not randomly choose this image from some conveniently available digital sampler of fine European portrait art. But I admit that my first reaction to it was not, as one might assume, to be angry or irritated, but rather to burst out laughing. The earnest "diversity" proselytizing packed into this choice of image, in this context, is so comically ham-handed, so imbecilic in its dishonesty, that it left me feeling rather cheery about an over-confident sloppiness, a real incompetence at the craft of propaganda, that could be a wee indicator of bad weather ahead for the guild of nation-wreckers.
This cheeriness is unwarranted, I know. Rule by imbeciles--and they still rule--does not end comically, and it's just a single textbook cover. Still, one takes one's laughs where one can.
- end of initial entry -
I'd like to see anybody justify this as appropriate.

I'd like to see anybody justify this as appropriate.[/LEFT]

I believe the image justifies the importance of 'the organ grinders monkey'
to the creation of European Culture. :)

1 in 4 didn't know who Adolf Hitler was.

About a quarter of the teenagers were unable to correctly identify Hitler as Germany’s chancellor in World War II, instead identifying him as a munitions maker, an Austrian premier and the German kaiser.

Well, what did the Murray Rothstein Celebrate Diversity cohort know?

About 8 in 10, a higher percentage than on any other literature question, knew that Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” is about two children affected by the conflict in their community when their father defends a black man in court.

The history question that proved easiest asked the respondents to identify the man who declared, “I have a dream.” Ninety-seven percent correctly picked the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Harper Lee's nonsense nigger-coddling propaganda and Marchin' Lucifer "I'm not a nigger tonight! I'm fucking for God!" Coon's I Have A Nightmare speech.
Goddamn the nigger loving in this nation is so insane. Thanks, public schools. Thanks a million. Or is it a couple trillion? Thanks, Jews.

Being pumped full of dates can bore students to the extent that they don't learn anything. It's not a good idea to concentrate solely on that.

But the tendency in modern history syllabi to not teach history as a sequence of events but as a series of confrontations between contending principles does give students nowadays a pretty hazy idea of when things happened, or exactly who did what.

Hitler? He was that bad guy in Germany, right?

The Civil War? It was over a hundred years ago, or something, right? And it was because the Southerners wanted slaves, and the Northerners thought that slavery was wrong, right?

Women's lib happened after WW2 because all the women who worked during the war didn't want to go back to being housemakers, right?

(I could go on.)

So students know who was, or is, the good guy and the bad guy - they know the uncomplicated, retarded, movie-narrative view of history - and that's all the history they need to know.