Testing People's Knowledge of World War II

[Childress]

 

[AttorneyAtWar]

Sadly, I'm not surprised.

[John Kettler]

Childress,

If possible, this is worse than "The Tonight Show" street quizzes back when Jay Leno hosted. Anyone who thinks Americans aren't dumbed down should be required to watch this video--presuming the person doing so can comprehend its message! Fortunately, we have at least a few kids left who haven't succumbed.

Regards,

John Kettler

[IronCat60]

Oh my God! It's just like my nephew!

Back when he was in high school, yes that far along in the education system, he brought a history book over as part of his homework. I was washing dishes and having a conversation with him. Passing by the counter where the history text book was I pointed to a picture of Lincoln on the mosaic that was the front cover. "Who is this?" I asked. His response was "I don't know, some dude with a beard?". I almost hit the floor! I then quizzed him about the Civil War, which was a name he kind of remembered. He said it was where a "bunch of dudes fought the rednecks over something". He had no clue about the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution or the Gettysburg Address.

What has happened to our society? People have forgotten that history is important as it depicts events that have shaped our world. It also reminds us not to forget those who have served our country in the civil and military fields. Ignorance is not bliss in this case. It is a dangerous road to getting involved in situations backed by a ignorant populace because they do not understand nor remember the lessons of history.

And most important, when our country faces a grave threat in the future how can we expect future generations to rise to the occasion with the same determination as our predecessors if they do not understand what our heritage entails.

Edited May 11, 2016 by mech.gato

[John Kettler]

mech.gato,

If you want to see just how precipitously we've fallen, take a look at the McGuffey Readers. Most schools used only the first two. The complete set goes through the 6th grade. Here's 2nd grade. 2nd grade! 

http://www.learn-to-read-prince-george.com/support-files/secondelreader.pdf

And just look at 6th grade. I consider myself to be an educated man (read prodigiously all my life; B.S. in Business Admin, but with earlier focus on Military History and Computer Science;  magna cum laude and peer tutored college seniors in English as a sophomore), but this thing gives me the heebie-jeebies. It is way beyond anything I had in high school in terms of what's covered and its depth and breadth. Indeed, there's a great deal here to which I was never exposed at all. That's also true for SF, 400 level Philosophy and such I had in college.

http://www.learn-to-read-prince-george.com/support-files/sixthelcreader.pdf

How about the 1895 High School Graduation Examination in Salina, Kansas?

http://grandfather-economic-report.com/1895-test.htm

What about a 1954 8th grade Civics Test?

http://www.littlethings.com/1954-8th-grade-civics-test/

There's a lot more to this story than what I can present here. It gets into things like foundations, think tanks, congressional hearings, policy wonks and the like. But I'll close with this, the  monograph "Railway Secrecy and Trusts," by John Bonham. It was recommended for reading by every American household and was so successful it went into two editions. I have read this one cover to cover (needed to do so for work), and it nearly broke my brain. Ponder the implications of what the literacy had to be in a typical American household in order to be able to read and comprehend this.

https://archive.org/details/railwaysecrecytr00bonhrich

Regards,

John Kettler

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 11, 2016 by John Kettler

[Michael Emrys]

3 hours ago, mech.gato said:

What has happened to our society?

We have been encouraged, even to one degree or another compelled, to cut off our roots to places, pasts, and people. Doing so makes us more susceptible to manipulation, both commercial and political. Look up the word 'anomie' sometime. 

Michael

[Childress]

There's a whiff of conspiracy about the dumbing down of the young generation. As Lenin remarked, 'Who Whom'? The members of these forums are certainly bright and well-informed. But we're mostly middle-aged guys. We escaped the US educational collapse- STEM fields excepted.

I posted this amusing- and alarming- video a while back. In case you missed it.

 

 

Edited May 11, 2016 by Childress

[A Canadian Cat]

I am not convinced that we have much to really worry about.  Sure those interviews are horrifying. I just do not think they really represent the true state of a generation.  My kids both had teachers that spent time in Grade 7 and 8 and then again in High school talking about plenty of important events that shaped the world as we know it.  So, it was not just my kids who got a bunch of background information at home they got it at school. 

To me it feels like when I hear my neighbours worrying about the behaviour of teenagers and young adults in our neighbour hood.  OK yes there is a group that smokes dope in the parks at night and come home from the bars and make noise on their way home and hog the side walk walking around in groups.  OK they are being self absorbed teenagers big surprise.  But I coached quite a few of these kids for years, I talk to them when I see them on the street and at the corner store or when I see them working their part time jobs in the grocery stores.  You know what, they and their friends are present and respectful nice young people.  On the whole.

We can all find sad, terrifying or otherwise bad examples but don't paint them all with the same brush.

Edited May 11, 2016 by IanL
really unfortunate spelling mistake.

[Michael Emrys]

2 hours ago, IanL said:

But I couched quite a few of these kids for years...

What, you were banging teenagers??? Naughty, naughty, naughty.

Michael

[A Canadian Cat]

Oh man - sigh.  Fixed in the original.

 

[General Jack Ripper]

I find the public school system these days is too busy catering to children's "feelings" to teach them history, writing, or critical thinking skills.

[A Canadian Cat]

Well that has not been my kids experience. 

[AttorneyAtWar]

Canadas education is very different than ours in the U.S., Ill probably get crucified for being a little too political here but I feel that letting states dictate lessons to an extent instead of having standardized curriculum across the board is a huge mistake.

[General Jack Ripper]

2 hours ago, IanL said:

Well that has not been my kids experience. 

You've got a good school in your town.

[John Kettler]

Childress,

I fear that video has cost me four months of head injury recovery. Could practically feel things ripping loose in my brain while watching that! Wonder whether I should start wearing thickly padded gloves so I don't face palm myself to death? Is there any evidence NK has picked this up and used it for propaganda? If not, maybe further executions are in order there.

New Math is what essentially killed me in terms of my subsequent Math progress. We were busy learning our multiplication tables when all of a sudden we were plunged into Algebra! Had a horrible time with order of operations and whatnot. Worse, the old ways of doing things like division went by the boards, and I found myself doing my division homework using Mom's long division (now forbidden to us) as a crosscheck on my own work. It was absolute insanity, and it broke me. Broke me so thoroughly there were anguished parent-teacher meetings at my parochial school. The subject? Why can't otherwise star student Johnny learn Math? It's a language after all, and he's terrific in English and is learning Latin for altar boy service. Whatever is the problem?

I've since learned the absolute criticality of proper sequencing in developmental processes. There's a reason a baby first crawls before it can walk. If prevented from crawling, critical neural connections don't get made, and development derails. Multiplication tables were my educational equivalent of crawling, and I hadn't mastered the larger numbers when I was suddenly expected not merely to walk but to run. While I freely grant I was massively distracted in Algebra I by a girl I was nuts over, I floundered (a "D") through it, but even with extra study using an excellent text, I was forced to drop Algebra II, for I was sinking in a morass of parentheses and sequences (that word again) of operations. Naturally, this meant I couldn't do Trigonometry or Calculus, both of which my Dad was superb in. So good that after coming home from the Korean War and in engineering school on the GI Bill he got an instructor fired for incompetence in teaching the latter. Later in life, he even got into exotica such as Fast Fourier Transformations and Wavelets.

Where I did shine, though, was Geometry. The first thing they taught us was that the drawings meant nothing, but they gave my brain something "concrete" to work with, and I became a terror. Not only did I ace the high school course, but when I went to college, I had a killer course called Greek Geometry. Why killer? It broke the heads of most high school Geometry teachers who took it! They couldn't handle the demands it made of them. I recall one proof which took 26 steps. I also did well in Probability & Statistics. A lifetime of wargaming was very handy with the former, and while I was never all that great with chi square and z scores, I still did well. But no matter how you slice it, to this day I am a Math cripple. And I have no hesitation in assigning the reason for that to the accursed New Math rammed down my throat and my rapidly developing brain circa 4th Grade! I never recovered. 

Though I can't say how many were affected, New Math flopped badly and obviously, but not before taking down who knows how many children's future Math development in the process. 

Anyone with a deep interest in the history and development of Mathematics and its teaching post-WW II in the US would probably find it worthwhile to plunge into this doctoral dissertation. The dolt below says of New Math (p. 37).

"In contrast to modern algebra and set theory, the importance
to us of modern analysis lies not In Its effect on the K-14 curriculum (which was negligible), but rather in its effect upon mathematicians."

It was, for my siblings and I, flat out traumatic--one familiar world shattered and something wholly alien and all but incomprehensible put in its stead. They were a year and two years behind me, so maybe the effects weren't as catastrophic over the long term (all of them later went on to college level Trig and Calculus), but our home was akin to a bomb impact zone for a time, with parents and kids alike emerging intellectually bloodied and dazed. Negligible my posterior! 

1981

A history of the "new math" movement in the United States

Robert W. Hayden

Iowa State University 

I would suggest, though, the author botched his dissertation's title by leaving out an important adjective. Based on my direct and devastating experience, I believe a more accurate title should be.

A history of the "new math" (other) movement in the United States

This is apt, since the program was ultimately flushed!

The Wiki for New Math says what happened quite bluntly. In a nutshell, learning Math must occur in steps, with mastery of each one being mandatory for the next. And while understated considerably, properly understood the last passage I've made prominent is a complete indictment of the fundamental (which I believe should be taken in several levels of meaning) problem with the very basis of the concept. Bolding mine, but I couldn't Bold the expression "cumulative development" which was already a link.

"In 1973, Morris Kline published his critical book Why Johnny Can't Add: the Failure of the New Math. It explains the desire to be relevant with mathematics representing something more modern than traditional topics. He says certain advocates of the new topics "ignored completely the fact that mathematics is a cumulative development and that it is practically impossible to learn the newer creations, if one does not know the older ones" (p. 17). Furthermore, noting the trend to abstraction in New Math, Kline says "abstraction is not the first stage, but the last stage, in a mathematical development" (p. 98).

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited May 12, 2016 by John Kettler

[Michael Emrys]

1 hour ago, John Kettler said:

New Math is what essentially killed me in terms of my subsequent Math progress.

I graduated high school in 1962, and so missed the whole New Math thing, which is possibly the luckiest thing that ever occurred in my life. But you have reminded me of many trials and tribulations I suffered through in math. Learning anything by rote was torment for me. I recall actually weeping when my mother forced me to memorize the times table. I hated the two years of algebra I took, but more on that a little later. My grades in math were pretty mediocre, usually B or B-. The only A I ever got in high school math was in solid geometry where my ability to visualize the problems was a great advantage and even fun. And even algebra became fun in my senior year when I took physics. There the equations were connected directly to something I was interested in and it became clear to me that math was actually the language used in describing things I cared about.

Fast forward about a decade and a half where I am spending a lot of my free time wargaming. There my ability to keep a running total of numbers followed by various operations on them all in my head without any necessity to write anything down was a great help. Then along came Squad Leader and in order to understand the ins and outs of that game I needed to work with probabilities of a complex sort. Somewhat to my pleased surprise I discovered that I had a facility for creating and solving complex equations. Algebra again! Only this time again it was directly connected to something I cared about.

And that's how it has been for me in just about all areas of my life. When dealing with a subject that I truly have a pre-existing interest in, I am usually very quick in picking up the necessary skills. But just throw something at me out of the blue and tell me, "Here, learn this," and I am all at sea, floundering about and usually getting nowhere. I suspect that I am not at all alone in this, and one of the big failings of our present day education system is that it fails to suss out what it is that kids care about and tying necessary life skills to those things. My observation is that, except for the occasional congenital idiot, kids want to learn. That's why they are sometimes real pests with all their questions. They want to know how things work. But they probably don't have the perspective to know what they are going to need to know further down the road in life. Which is why they needs parents and teachers who can see the connections between what they are curious about and the larger scheme of things and can gently steer them down that path.

Michael

[Childress]

1 hour ago, Michael Emrys said:

Fast forward about a decade and a half where I am spending a lot of my free time wargaming.

 

Acquiring a wargaming habit would represent a vast improvement in the mental lives of the young generation, if only for the history aspect. I won't say they're dumb as rocks, the evolutionary process takes millennia to arrive at that outcome. But they learn and know very little. A neighbor spent 2 years at Berkeley and he can barely read. 

The kids in that NK video can be considered victims.  Blame the system.

[A Canadian Cat]

10 hours ago, Raptorx7 said:

Canadas education is very different than ours in the U.S., Ill probably get crucified for being a little too political here but I feel that letting states dictate lessons to an extent instead of having standardized curriculum across the board is a huge mistake.

In Canada the Provinces provide education and set the curriculum so in that respect things are similar.  There is no national curriculum in Canada either.

 

7 hours ago, SLIM said:

You've got a good school in your town.

Well I do admit that we do yes.

[AttorneyAtWar]

1 minute ago, IanL said:

In Canada the Provinces provide education and set the curriculum so in that respect things are similar.  There is no national curriculum in Canada either.

 

Well I do admit that we do yes.

That may be so but do some of those provinces use the bible instead of evolution to teach how life came to be?

Edited May 12, 2016 by Raptorx7

[Childress]

1 minute ago, Raptorx7 said:

That may be so but do some of those provinces use the bible instead of evolution to teach how life came to be?

Teaching the Bible in lieu of ***** or ****** would represent a step up in the current curricula. 

[A Canadian Cat]

1 minute ago, Raptorx7 said:

That may be so but do some of those provinces use the bible instead of evolution to teach how life came to be?

Wellllll no I guess not.  We do have some interesting wrinkles though.  For example in Ontario there is a dual system where a fully public system runs next to a publicly funded Catholic system.  I'll stay away from any politics but point out that while the Ontario curriculum mandates as science based approach to teaching the science classes the Catholic system is allowed to also teach the Catholic belief system. I honestly do not know what that looks like in a science class though but the certainly cannot just ignore evolution.

[Childress]

Ian, if you have spare time check out one of the numerous compendiums of Civil War letters. Many of the writers come from humble backgrounds and ,yes, their letters are often studded with religious references. But their writing skills and general knowledge put, imho, contemporary students to shame.

http://www.civilwararchive.com/LETTERS/letters.htm

[user1000]

On 5/12/2016 at 7:12 AM, Raptorx7 said:

That may be so but do some of those provinces use the bible instead of evolution to teach how life came to be?

Raptor wasn't that you on the right at 0:33 in that video? Now go read some history books..

[AttorneyAtWar]

7 hours ago, user1000 said:

Raptor wasn't that you on the right at 0:33 in that video? Now go read some history books..

This coming from the guy who thought you could bounce .50 cal rounds into the belly of a tiger!

Priceless!

Edited May 15, 2016 by Raptorx7

[Childress]

On 5/12/2016 at 7:10 AM, IanL said:

In Canada the Provinces provide education and set the curriculum so in that respect things are similar.  There is no national curriculum in Canada either.

 

1

The more decentralized, the better.

Edit: the quoting mechanic on this forum seems very wonky.

Edited May 15, 2016 by Childress