People not knowing about major historical events

People in general always have been uninformed, and they have liked it that way.

[quote]OP: "niche history"

Oh, dear.

History is really shit in school, at least in the US.

I was so young when I learned about the Underground Railroad, I took it literally. I think I was in the second or third grade and I thought slaves were using underground railroad tunnels to travel.

Same with the Hiroshima bombings. I think that was 4th grade.

But I learned the Holocaust in high school when I was old enough to understand it! We learned about people of colors pain when we were too young to get it and white pain when we were older.

I think it’s charged a bit now. I don’t know.

I don't understand it either OP. I learned a lot in school as well as books. Even tv like historical drama can provide history lessons.

What’s wrong with “niche history?” It conveys OP’s thought.

A friend's daughter recently graduated from a very good college. She tells me that all her daughter knows about American history is what she learned seeing "Hamilton."

That's fucking horrifying R6.

I just don’t know why people don’t wonder about things and look it up at least. When I was a kid I’d find out some little tidbit and then go find books about it because I was curious.

Given how little most of our Congress knows, R6, I'd say your friend's daughter is pretty well-informed.

OP, The American population is dumb as fuck about general history. It's quite scary. However, it does explain how Trump was elected.

Most American history taught in public school at least when I was in school 20 years ago was focused on colonial times thru the Civil War. After that you sped through everything else. I have no idea how its taught post 9/11. I also remember world history was freshman year, American history was junior year, and American government/civics was senior year. So only one year was focused on American history.

A friend of mine said to me the other day “communism never was really that bad”. There you go.

30s here. I went on a date with a guy and he thought Communism was something from the early 90s.

Imagine not knowing about something that lead to the suffering and deaths of 100+ million people.

I graduated high school in 89. We only made it to the Civil War in high school. It was like every grade started history with the pilgrims and ended with the Civil War with each grade having to endlessly memorize more individual battle dates and leaders. I think we would have been better educated if we didn't memorize leaders and exact dates, maybe we would have made it through at least WWII and I would not have had to learn about American Japanese internment camps in an English class. And Vermont schools are pretty good, I cannot imagine deep Southern schools making it past the Civil War by much.

R10 People are very incurious.

There are some people who are only capable about having conversations about themselves. I used to think it always came from a place of self-absorption but lately, I think most people just have a low level of intelligence. I have conversations with people and they’re only capable of telling stories about themselves and people they know. They don’t know anything beyond their lives.

I’m a photographer and I have photography friends who don’t watch movies, don’t really read, don’t enjoy art, basic music taste and I’m always confused as to where they draw their inspiration from. I guess it’s more technical whereas I try to draw from all of those things, and even history.

OMG, shut up with your stupid opinions - I have some real news:

OMG, I just heard Kennedy has been shot!

The military is now running so short of their recruiting goals due to the inability of young men and women to read at an 8th grade level.

And you expect them to know history? Ha !

Me too, R8!

When I read a non-fiction book or watch a movie or documentary, I always want more information. I'll google a few keywords and I find all kinds of facts about the topic. Amazon Books has me sweeping once on my phone and I'll read the books when they arrive.

I enjoy learning about gay history. I grew up in the 60s and have stories to tell the young generations. I would listen to men who were struggling to find a happy gay life in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. They had stories to tell. I am fascinated.

Get use to it because it's not an anomaly. Now if you want to talk about reality television then they shine.

Many minorities don't want to remember a time when they weren't prosperous, cool and popular. And Millennials will honor that in order to seem 'woke'.

Most Americans who lived during the depression and world war 2 have passed on. I remember stories my parents and grandparents told us about those years, the skimping and scraping, the looking for work, the rationing, the donations of anything steel, rubber and aluminum, the bombs, the "keep calm, carry on" and "making due" slogans, the deaths of our grandfathers in war...

We were lucky we didn't experience those things. We've become complacent. I don't know if anybody currently under the age of 25 could cope with the drastic changes necessary. They've had it too easy, therefore no need for exploration of the past, no desire to learn from it.

When I was a kid I’d hear about something that seemed crazy to me like the witchcraft inquisitions in Europe or giant ocean liners and find books about them at the library. It’s shocking to me that people no longer do this.

Liberal arts education has been dead for a long time. Education now is vocational training, even for professional jobs.

R21 Too easy? I mean come on, we’ve been living in a global pandemic. 2020 was a pretty horrible year and we haven’t seen the effects of what it will do to younger generations education in the future. Or even their bodies for the ones who had OG Covid.

[quote] History is really shit in school, at least in the US.

I expect that from the general public but it's also the so called educated class who can't be bothered.

There was a media firestorm when Trump mused about Andrew Jackson and the Civil War. "𝐼 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛, ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑤 𝐽𝑎𝑐𝑘𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑎 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑙𝑒 𝑏𝑖𝑡 𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟, 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑𝑛'𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐶𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑙 𝑊𝑎𝑟.".

Across the board the media reaction was like this USA Today story. Apparently not a single one of these educated thought leaders had ever heard of the Nullification Crisis of 1833 when Jackson threatened to personally lead the Army into South Carolina and hang local leaders who defied federal authority. Secession and states rights movements were tamped down for a generation.

Maybe it's "niche" but it was one of the most important moments in the half century before the Civil War and totally unfamiliar to the university elite.

There's more history now OP so some things get dropped.

You gotta factor in that things like 9/11 are now "historical subjects" and we're over 20 years into the 21st century. Heck, 9/11 probably takes up a chapter on its own.

But let's not diss the new generation, Americans have always been lax about history. Heck, most white people didn't know about the 1921 Tulsa Massacre until is was featured in an episode of HBO's "Watchmen" in 2019. A firggen event where the whole fucking District of Greenwood, a bustling and successful city, was demolished in a war like murder attack... because of racism.

I have always been embarrassed by my lack of historical knowledge: of the US, of Europe (especially the Holy Roman Empire), of the Middle East, of Africa, of Asia, of the Americas. Not to mention the ancient world, Biblical history, and the histories of Christianity and Islam. There often seems like there is too much to know.

I tend to be drawn to what OP (to my mind, accurately) refers to as "niche history." In my case, I always want to know more about certain topics like jazz history, or the history of early film, or maritime history. Lately, I've become interested in the history of evolution.

Of course, the things I know the most about are utterly useless. They include: the DB Cooper hijacking case, I Love Lucy, and the Heaven's Gate cult.

It's overwhelming. I'm in a constant battle with myself: do I desire depth or breadth? I could read a 400-page book on, say, Classical Greece and then remember only the faintest outline of its contents. A few years ago, I was on a mission to read biographies of all of the founding fathers. Now I recall the things that Do Not Really Matter, like George Washington never had biological children (but was a devoted stepfather) and Ben Franklin was a womanizer.

[quote] People not knowing about major historical events

But all that old stuff … is dead.

My sister (in her mid 30s) recently went for a walk with her best friend, during which the friend turned to her and said, with the zeal and amazement of this being recently acquired knowledge: ‘Have you ever heard about this place called Auschwitz?’

My sister was appalled and saddened in equal measure.

[quote]I just don’t know why people don’t wonder about things and look it up at least.

I've always wondered the same, but everywhere, even on here where people consider themselves better than others and well educated, the innate lack of curiosity prevails over everything else. People would rather post something they made up and which sounds good to them in their heads, than spend 30 seconds looking something up. Frequently, people online and in real life get agitated and angry if you suggest that they should have just gone to Google. Expecting them to be curious about something or read an article, let alone a book, about it? It will never happen.

This isn't something new. I'm in my 50s and no one I know my age wants to look anything up. They never did. They were the kids who were astonished when the "nerd" knew something that wasn't on the last quiz they had to take.

R27 You don’t have to read today.

I love to chill or fall asleep to history podcasts or YouTube videos.

I mean brushing up on history you can get some things explained in 5 or 10 minutes on YouTube lol. Quick sum ups of history.

I go through phases. The last few years has been centered on Cleopatra which was about I don’t know, 600-700 years of history of Rome, Egypt, and Greece. After Cleopatra, I learned about her family the Ptolemies which lead me to Alexander the Great. Then I learned about the Egyptian dynasties, there were so many so I chose the most important all the way back to Narmer. Then I did post-Cleopatra and learned about Rome until it’s fall.

Sometimes historical figures can guide you.

Don’t forget about so-called homeschools. Many of them are Christian based and god only knows what they are being taught or indoctrinated with and what qualifications these teachers have, if any.

I don't know about today, of course, but when I was in elementary school in the 1970s and 1980s, historical figures like Lincoln who "taught themselves" or were schooled in tiny one-room schoolhouses with a 14-year-old Laura Ingalls Wilder as their teacher were lauded as great men. That romanticizing of a wholesale lack of education cannot be helping our current situation.

I can never understand how people can deny climate change and how inactivity on this issue is so publicly acceptable in the media and society.

Any idiot knows that there was an industrial revolution that began in the 18th C that has progressively had a huge impact on our climate. The only way to deny this is to be stupid.

I remember being on vacation the summer before fifth grade (mid 1990s). I was on the beach with some older kids from another state and they did not know what CENTURY the American Civil War occurred in. I knew it to the year, although I didn't say anything. They were in middle school or maybe even freshmen in high school.

I was scandalized at the time.

[quote] I was on the beach with some older kids from another state

Those kids were young, DUMB and full of come.

Oh, dear r36

[quote]I just don’t know why people don’t wonder about things and look it up at least.

[quote]When I was a kid I’d hear about something that seemed crazy to me like the witchcraft inquisitions in Europe or giant ocean liners and find books about them at the library. It’s shocking to me that people no longer do this.

[quote]I just don’t know why people don’t wonder about things and look it up at least. When I was a kid I’d find out some little tidbit and then go find books about it because I was curious.

[quote]I’m a photographer and I have photography friends who don’t watch movies, don’t really read, don’t enjoy art, basic music taste and I’m always confused as to where they draw their inspiration from.

I don't know how intelligent people can be so incurious. Almost every day I make at least100 Google searches, to refresh my memory of facts and details and the origins of things and their connections and influence. How can you not? What year did Picasso die? The Ouija board is a relatively modern thing, right? The distance from Prague to Budapest? Who were the Five Good Emperors of Ancient Rome? What other films did Marco Berger direct? What are some if the earliest examples of an unreliable narrator in fiction?

The answers (or enough information to make the enquiry an interesting one) are in our pockets, our hands, our phones, yet hardly anyone bothers.

And R15, I have artist friends and just have to I tell them, "Thursday night we'going to an gallery/exhibition opening," or "the last weekend next month we're going to a big art fair" in another city, or to see a studio tour of a new artists' workspace. With them it's not a lack of curiosity at all, but that they are not always good to paying attention to all that's going on around them. They love doing these things and most importantly seeing new things, it's just to that they usually don't think to look for anything on their own.

And then there are those who can't be bothered, but they're seldom very good artists.

[quote]There was a media firestorm when Trump mused about Andrew Jackson and the Civil War. "𝐼 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛, ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑤 𝐽𝑎𝑐𝑘𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑎 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑙𝑒 𝑏𝑖𝑡 𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟, 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑𝑛'𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐶𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑙 𝑊𝑎𝑟.".

[quote]Across the board the media reaction was like this USA Today story. Apparently not a single one of these educated thought leaders had ever heard of the Nullification Crisis of 1833

This is absolutely untrue. Everyone laughed at him because his theory was bonkers. Most news outlets explained what Trump was probably talking about, and true to form, the NYT was more polite about it and gave him the most credit, asking historians for their input, but even they couldn't explain away Trump's odd ideas.

And, of course, it's not like Trump actually knew history or anything about Jackson to begin with. He probably heard about it on Fox or somewhere like that, and parrotted it back, but not even getting that quite right.

Long ago in another century when I went to school, American history and Government were required. You could not graduate without them. I think keeping people stupid and feeding them conspiracy theories is deliberate. And you know, our labor unions used to educate their membership. My father and his friends worked the assembly line at GM, and some of them had less than a high school education, and they could discuss trade issues and economics with a college professor. And they understood the law too. They'd go to their union meetings and discuss things. So it isn't just our schools, it's the union busting that has been going on so successfully since Reagan busted the air traffic controllers.

People think the movies tell the true story of events. It's scary how much trust they place in a movie to be factually correct and accurate.

I am always amazed when I occasionally go on facebook and someone I went to high school or college will post something historical and be like, "I wish they would've taught this in school." And, depending on whether or not I feel like getting in the argument, sometimes I will post back something like, "They did, we were in that class together." I don't think it is so much that things aren't being covered, it is more the students tuning it out and teachers not knowing how to teach it in a way that engages them.

r38 ^^ I DO THE SAME THING!

I've always been an extremely curious person, and before internet and search engines became a thing, i was constantly told to "look it up" in the encyclopedia - AND I DID.

I just don't get how there are so many people who don't want to know how things work, why they work the way they do, what happened to the Assyrians, just anything that makes me wonder why - I google it. As soon as I started to have my own home computer in the mid 90s, I was constantly asking questions to AskJeeves, Yahoo! WebCrawler, Alta Vista, etc.

I cannot tell you how excited I was when search engines first became a thing. Back when Alta Vista was a great search engine, I started to use the internet to look things up all the time. I loved it. I assumed everyone would start using it to look up answers. Instead, people seem even more reluctant than they did before, when now it only takes a few seconds to get an answer.

Of course, I also thought people would learn to recognize trolls after a while, and they never figured that one out, either.

Im also a very curious person but also loved history as a child. In fifth grade I could tell you all about the Spanish conquistadors, Ponce de Leon, Columbus and name all his ships, etc. I read books voraciously.

A Columbia education...

When I was a lonely little kid raised by my immigrant grandmother, she constantly told me, "Go read a book." She said it to keep me out of her hair. But I did. And I developed a passion for the library. Public libraries became my refuge and the librarians always engaged me about things to read. Inevitably I read histories and biographies of famous people and my passion for history grew. In school (nuns) we had soe amazing teachers. In two particular subjects, English and History, you knew it was their passion because they would tell anecdotes that weren't in our text book. I became fascinated. Now it's a reflex. History has become the framework for most of my political discussion.

I took a high school class called "the Totalitarian World" in the 70s. It was about the Soviet Union, the countries of Eastern Europe, and China. I enjoyed looking at pictures of Romanian, Bulgarian and Hungarian men; such swarthiness creatures, I had a hard-on during many of the classes.

Maybe I should have said "swarthy creatures". My glasses were all fogged up.

I had a great history teacher who made history more relatable by telling us about the graffiti on ancient Roman ruins. Stuff that was basically "Marcus Maximus has a big cock" which just reinstated the reality that people have not changed at all. Just clothes and technology.

r51 I remember reading about that around a year ago: stuff like "the food here tastes like shiite." lol

R51 That is one of the major things that can connect people to history. Learn about the leaders and celebrities of the time, for sure, but focus on the average person. I remember one of my teachers taught the Civil War from the perspective of the young soldiers and drummers that were like 14. It really drew the class into it more, because it was young guys fighting a war who were like only a couple years older than we were.

With apologies to H. L. Mencken:

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the basic knowledge of the American public."

R52 a few months ago someone posted a pic of some cathedral wood carving of a guy, legs in the air, dick and balls out.

People haven't changed a bit.

r15 Yes, incurious, also self-absorbed. The majority of people these days will tell an anecdote along these lines: "I went to the market, and this teenage mother in front of me was letting her kids stick their fingers into the packs of meat at the butcher case. I really told her off, and was still shaking my head when I left." And that's the end.

What's wrong with that? It leaves out the most important and interesting part: [italic] What did the other person say and do in response??? [/italic] And yet, in my experience this kind of tale is the norm; and, usually, when I respond, "So . . . what did the other person do?", they look completely baffled, as if they hadn't even considered such a thing. People are focused on themselves, as if everything they do were simply their "performance art" for which they want good reviews; what other people do doesn't enter into it.

How is this on-topic? It's just that people are so self-absorbed, they can't conceive that historical events--anything that happened before their own time--can possibly have any value or significance. And though people have always been that way a little, it's worse now than before the onset of the computer age: This kind of self-absorption is fostered by the cocoon-making facilitated by cyber-culture.

It's true what r55 says, that people haven't changed a bit--but that pertains to their inside makeup. It's this that can bridge the years between someone living today and historical events . . . but only if the someone living today gets outside of self and crosses that bridge.

It's sad.

And I don't really understand it. Even when I was in high school, I was riveted by history. I read biographies of anyone and everyone interesting. Still do. Even people I loathe. I just find how we all get to where we are so fascinating.

It's one of my favorite things about the DL. The cool history I learn here.

But most people don't give a fuck. Oh well.

I do not have a history education beyond high school but it’s always been one of my favourite genres to read. I also love history documentaries I don’t get anybody not being interested in it.

[quote]The military is now running so short of their recruiting goals due to the inability of young men and women to read at an 8th grade level.

It's depressing to realize that the military has higher standards than the U.S. Congress.

R56 I work in management at the HQ of a retail beauty company and had to spend a week at a retail location because the manager was on vacation.

I worked with these very sweet girls who ranged between 16 and 20. The conversations were painful.

They talked about their entire families, I learned about their Aunts and Uncle and their spouses and children and their cousins and how quirky and kooky they are! They are such characters to these girls.

And one girl was talking to a customer and through their conversation, she found out the customer knew her father. The girl lit up and started talking about how her father knows everyone in town and how everyone loves him and etc, etc, etc. She was so excited!

I had long conversations about nails - what they have done right now and what they want to get next, had long conversations about clothes they recently bought, what their mothers bought, etc, etc.

These kids don’t even watch TV anymore, they don’t have the attention span to even absorb a TV show. Any entertainment they get is from social media like TikTok which is all truly mindless entertainment. When they’re not taking pictures of themselves, they’re watching video clips of girls dancing. They don’t even have a grasp on pop culture which is the lowest form of knowledge.

I mean absolutely sheltered, vapid people and I don’t see them ever evolving into anything beyond that.

And yes I see how that all ties into history and people being did interested in anything beyond 6 feet away from their nose. Just incurious! I imagine they have moments where their thoughts go dark. That’s there’s moments of blackness.

I went to a great middle school & high school. I learned civics, American history, and world history, but it wasn’t as comprehensive as the information we have now, even though my classes were AP classes.

History changes due to new information declassified, disclosed, discovered, corrected, added to, etc. History isn’t necessarily a done deal. It’s like a living thing.

You have to continually study independently, in order to have a decent, basic blueprint.

Most people in America today under the age of 40 know shit about much, unless they’re attending school in a fantastic school district where taxes are HIGH, or private schools that teach a FACTUAL, secular curriculum.

I have seen a few comments in this thread that echo my own experience.

Went to public school. History in the early grades was largely focused on the American Revolution, and then we shifted to the civil war and world wars in middle school. Oddly, very little was covered in high school outside of the history of slavery and the civil rights movement of the 20th century. It was pretty much all a focus on racism and social justice concepts with not a lot of actual history being taught. I recall taking a World History class, but it was pretty skimpy on anything outside of the Renaissance in Europe.

Most American and World History I learned myself by reading independently, because it interested me. But for most of my classmates, I am guessing that their understanding of World War 2 is fairly basic or severely lacking unless they read up on it of their own volition. I have heard the same from my spouse, who I have noticed really did not know a lot of basic facts about World War 2, for example.

We both graduated high school in the mid-90s. I have a feeling how history is taught in public school has only worsened significantly since then.

R60 I work in an office environment and see this kind of thing in the staff under 30. They have no short or long term memories. Also when they read something it’s like they don’t read the entire page. The absorb a very small part of it. Are that many people illiterate or do they just not read more than a paragraph?

I am 57 and was / am an only child. I grew up with the 13 tv channels. You watched what was on - Even though I dreaded when my Dad would have The Wode World of Sports on on Saturdays or the Olympics for two solid weeks - you were forced to be present and be in the moment - no scrolling through your phone or watching you tube - you actually learned things. With no informercials I watched a million old movies I wouldn’t have watched. I learned a lot of history that way or things that sparked my interest that I wanted to learn more about. My mom was a big reader so we went to the library several times a week. As wonderful as the internet is - when was the last time anyone used a globe? An encyclopedia?

r64 - Got you beat, we only had 3 channels (or 4 on a clearer day, we didn't have cable, just an aerial antennae), and I'm 53 - pretty much missed most of the Golden Age of MTV lol. Also, we weren't in charge of the TV, our parents were. And no Saturday morning or daytime tv watching for us either. Stuff outside, ride the horses, ride a bike, go hiking, read a book. Go see the very few kids that lived like a quarter mile down or up the road away from us.

So as I wasn't the most active kid, I was constantly finding a hidey spot to read a book. Usually adult books because we didn't have money for kids books, so I read my parents' books. You never, EVER said "I'm bored" because you'd find yourself clearing a 1/4 acre of brush or mucking chicken, pig, goat or horse pens.

I went to high school in the 80s and my history class was all about American exceptionalism, how we kicked ass in WWI, WWII and Vietnam. LMAO.

I'm a boomer and memorization was a thing. I can still do math in my head from memorizing the multiplication tables. I can remember having to memorize the Bill of Rights and The Gettysburg Address.

Young people know nothing about the history of the movies, either. No idea. Friends were recently talking to a 20-something who'd never heard of Greta Garbo. Emily Blunt is probably too old to be of any possible interest.

[quote]I enjoy learning about gay history. I grew up in the 60s and have stories to tell the young generations. I would listen to men who were struggling to find a happy gay life in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. They had stories to tell. I am fascinated.

Really, all one need know nowadays is that Marsha P threw the first brick, and all things FOLLIES.

To R46, no one reads books anymore!! Boomers like me read everything, if I didn't understand, I went to the library. My math skills were "off the charts", the nuns in St Bridget's stopped correcting me by age 9.

The attacks on the WTC Towers happened 21 years ago. Lots of kids born sincethen and grown sincethen. They have no idea what that was or why it meant something that POTUS OBama killed Osama Bin Laden. Now that is shit we saw. We lived through it. I get the impression that in addition to being self involved and incurious, they just do not see why it is relevant to their lives in 2022.

r71 there are plenty of other wartime incidents that are also very tragic. And much more world shape-shifting.

R68 Because one failure of history education in the US, and one that would make it much more accessible and relevant to young people, would be their to include more cultural history. When students are learning about the Great Depression and WWII and how they impacted people at that time, films and radio broadcasts are some of the most powerful tools. When we teach civil rights show the news broadcasts, same with Vietnam, etc... Show how Hollywood was portraying it on movie and television screens, listen to the music that was being listened to, etc... just as the graffiti of ancient Rome tells us more about them than we get from the more erudite ancient texts, I think the same can be said of our media. The mass media IS the US' greatest historical contribution to the world's culture.

Long ago my charming little niece told me that Texas was a foreign country. It does seem that way but I had to tell her it was one of the United States.

An adult friend told me that "Europe was involved in WWII along with Japan." Tell me something new, idiot.

People do not give a shit

[quote]I have photography friends

Oh, dear.

[quote]Columbus and name all his ships

All THREE? Color me impressed. (Not.)

Pinta, Maria and Santa Maria. Loser who doesn't know that.

[quote]A friend's daughter recently graduated from a very good college. She tells me that all her daughter knows about American history is what she learned seeing "Hamilton."

I once spoke to someone who argued that the US wasn't nearly as racially divided as people claim. She actually noted that several of the Founding Fathers were PoC and cited Hamilton.

I kid you not. And the worst part is when I tell people, they tell me that it's an urban legend as they've heard a similar story told by other people. Yet, I know my story is true because I was the one who actually had this conversation with this idiot. It concerns me that enough people have made similar stupid statements that it's reached urban legend status because so many people have had similar conversations.

[quote]Pinta, Maria and Santa Maria. Loser who doesn't know that.

LOL - the worst part is that people are running around saying crap like this for real, rather than for comic effect.

oh, sorry...r80 - what are the names of the 3 ships Columbus sailed? Nothing to do with him landing in America....just the names?@

You're an asshole.

^ Know random facts from the past is different from having a true and abiding knowledge of the past.

[quote]Pinta, Maria and Santa Maria. Loser who doesn't know that.

[quote]oh, sorry...[R80] - what are the names of the 3 ships Columbus sailed? Nothing to do with him landing in America....just the names?@

LOL - it wasn't for comedic effect?

R78, you dolt. It's the Nina, la Pinta, and the Santa Maria.

"On August 3, 1492, Christopher Columbus and his crew set sail from the port of Palos in southern Spain on three vessels: la Santa Clara (Niña), la Pinta and la Santa Gallega (Santa Maria)."

Oh, I'm sorry...it was the NINA, Pinta, and Santa Maria. I got one letter wrong. I'm sure you knew better, dumbass.

It still doesn't make it wrong who discovered America =NOT COLUMBUS.

we all know this. AND HE WASN'T YOUR EITHER. just shut up.

^ Oh, you Revisionist Historians are everywhere!

I'm extremely sick of the dumbass misogyny of the assholes that insist they are so much better humans than ALL AMERICANS EVER.

fuck off, all. we don't keep pushing your bodies down on stupid spikes, and you should all just quit trying to make yourselves so much better than anyone else besides your own damn country. I don't do this at all. I'm really just asking you to stop already. if you don't like people in the U.S, STOP COMING HERE AND COMMENTING!!! I'm getting tired of the Nationalism here. It's fucking tiresome as hell, no matter which way it goes.

R87 Are you referring to some particular post in this thread?

It's not like I named them Abercrombie, Fitch & American Eagle, FFS. Fucking assholes.

GoodNIGHT.

“Get use to it”.

Not just history, R19.

r85

Leif was the first to discover that the Amerinds had already discovered America.

R13 Their must be a Marx shaped hole in many peoples world

R74 Your nice is correct Texas was annexed by the us in 1845

Oh, DEAR r92/r93

the assault on your local library..... not helping.

You can see the lack of respect for history as a discipline in the way people have contextualised the pandemic, and the way they are already rewriting its history. "People have died every year of the flu, and Covid's just the same", and "Most people aren't dying OF Covid, they are dying WITH Covid." Statistically, both these statements couldn't be more wrong, but they are what most people are happy thinking and part of the story they will pass on to their kids. You see, real, researched history gets in the way of what we like to think.

Those who are saying the search engines give people history at their fingertips are right, but what about YouTube? You can go on there and see for yourself MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech -- not just the famous bit but the whole thing, before Aretha said to tell them about the dream. You can see the size of the crowd and watch its reactions. This is true of so many great moments of the last, well, nearly 150 years now, yet people can't be dragged away from the cat and puppy videos and Tik Toks of amateurs dancing. When they could be watching everyone from Anna Pavlova through the Nicholas Brothers and Gwen Verdon to today's top stars of ballet and modern dance, but if you give them the choice they will actively reject the latter option.

R96 Part of the issue with MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech is that because his children enforced copyright on his speeches, schools had to pay more money to play such things so most showed cheaper videos that only had excerpts. However, now that we have youtube and other streaming services it shouldn't be expensive or difficult to find and should be shown more.

These people are not helping this unfortunate trend.

No, but in a healthy society they shouldn't be able to get enough attention to influence anyone. They are Peak Vacuous.

Regarding the comments about who discovered America, what about the stone-age hunters of 13,000 years ago? Is it only discovered if a white man discoverers and names it?

When it comes to who "discovered" America I just go by the way my AP US History teacher explained it. We count Columbus as "discovering" the Americas in 1492, because after his discovery there was constant, widespread, and growing interaction with people from Europe, then Africa, then Asia. With the Vikings it was intermittent and was not shared with the wider world. Of course the natives were here but since others didn't know they were there it was a discovery for the explorer to discover that there was lands and peoples there. It isn't that they didn't exist only that they weren't known.

My 18yo niece told me President Kennedy was assassinated in a plane crash.

[quote]My sister (in her mid 30s) recently went for a walk with her best friend, during which the friend turned to her and said, with the zeal and amazement of this being recently acquired knowledge: ‘Have you ever heard about this place called Auschwitz?’

Is this the same friend who wanted to name her baby Treblinka?

R29, you reminded me of one of my favorite Woody Allen lines I think from Celebrity. The blond bimbo actress character who has JUST taken up a writing course turns to the main character and says, "Have ya ever heard of Chekov? I write just like 'em."

[quote]Oh, I'm sorry...it was the NINA, Pinta, and Santa Maria. I got one letter wrong. I'm sure you knew better, dumbass.

Pinta is the model of car you were conceived in.

My neighbor's daughter works as a cashier at Target. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But she was arguing with her mother ( they're white) t hat Martin Luther King was our first Black President and he got killed. She was so insistent her mother, who's 42, asked me if I knew whether or not it was true.

[quote]My neighbor's daughter works as a cashier at Target. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But she was arguing with her mother ( they're white) t hat Martin Luther King was our first Black President and he got killed. She was so insistent her mother, who's 42, asked me if I knew whether or not it was true.

This reflects an even more insidious trend - people so adamant that their factually wrong ideas are correct that they're allowed to continue to believe them.

What I find even more disturbing is that almost EVERYONE has a computer in their hands. Not only was your neighbor's daughter wrong, but she was so intransigent that she was unwilling to check and the mother was so incompetent that she couldn't be bothered to search "first black US president" and get the real answer.

The world is so stupid now that they don't even know how to find the answer even though they know in laughable detail how to use tiktok, twitter, and instagram to share their stupid with the world.

He was married to Frances Farmer, r91.

[quote] I cannot tell you how excited I was when search engines first became a thing. Back when Alta Vista was a great search engine, I started to use the internet to look things up all the time. I loved it. I assumed everyone would start using it to look up answers. Instead, people seem even more reluctant than they did before, when now it only takes a few seconds to get an answer.

Most young people today don't even spend much time using a web browser. They're on their phones, texting, using apps like TikTok and Instagram, and snapping photos. The days of surfing the web by sitting down at your laptop or desktop computer and firing up the browser with Google as your home page are disappearing.

[quote]I cannot tell you how excited I was when search engines first became a thing. Back when Alta Vista was a great search engine, I started to use the internet to look things up all the time.

Remember when you actually had to use multiple search engines if you wanted to be sure to get comprehensive results for a particular line of inquiry?

The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

[quote] The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

La plume de ma tante.

Est sur le bureau

[quote]My neighbor's daughter works as a cashier at Target. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But she was arguing with her mother ( they're white) t hat Martin Luther King was our first Black President and he got killed. She was so insistent her mother, who's 42, asked me if I knew whether or not it was true.

damn r106, whew chile, the ghetto!

Few young people realize Martin Luther King was actually a white Asian guy.

[quote] a white Asian guy.

Yes, a big, angry, white Asian guy.

[quote]I got one letter wrong. I'm sure you knew better, dumbass.

Bless your retard heart, Sweet Pea. You got one whole ship wrong.

This thread has brought out the Datalounge pedants.

I wish they were a little more active in the movie gossip threads which are full of hokey, brain-dead, unprovable claims.

EVERY thread brings out the Datalounge pedants, r118.

It's DL's version of Godwin's law.

MAGAt "patriots" don't realize that this country was founded to get away from the rule of a king

[quote]the explorer to discover that there was lands and peoples there. It isn't that they didn't exist only that they weren't known.

Actually, they WERE known, to the multiple nations who lived there. Just like, y'know, Germans would still know Italy and Spain even if the Chinese had never heard of Europe.

What you [unfortunately] mean is, R101, they weren't known to "the people that matter".

More hilariously, the majority of people don't know the difference between Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Whatever the facts, it always tickled me that he was a baptist and not a lutheran.

I thank my lucky stars that I was born curious. It has been the most rewarding part of my time on earth.

There are still curious young people. It's just that they've never been the majority but always a minority.

Since civilization was first organized into communities with hierarchies it has been a fact that suppression information and denying knowledge or education, or condemning those who seek or who teach, was a critical way to control the masses. For centuries reading was denied to the serfs and lower classes as the Catholic Church only allowed priests to read or communicate religious teachings. Women for centuries were denied the right to an education and were forbidden from reading and learning anything that did not line up with her prescribed role. Slaves were not allowed to learn to read or be educated, punishable by death. Of course we can cite exceptions but they only prove the rule. My whole point is, there is a purpose and a reason why our public education system is being hollowed out and dismantled. There is a reason why history and accurate information is being suppressed. And to the extent t hat people self suppress, they are allowing themselves to be trapped and to be the victims of the powerful. Knowledge and education are the only way a civilized society can survive and prosper. We should be out here with our hair on fire at the ignorance that is deliberately promoted by those who want t o control us.

R101 I just meant the wider world. Of course the people that lived here would know of one another. But since they weren't known to the rest of the world the "discovery" by Columbus really brought the modern world into existence by uniting the civilizations of the Americas with the rest of the world. It is the old idea about a tree falling in forest. Did it really make a sound if no one was there to witness it?

Even if you never left your home and never met a foreigner, most people in pre-Columbian times who lived in Europe, Asia, and Africa knew of one another's existence. The Americans did not know nor have contact with these other civilizations and for the most part the peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa didn't know the Americas or her people were there. The "discovery" was therefore the discovery and founding of global culture, because for the first time people across the world knew that each other existed. Then the explorers inspired by Columbus completed the job by "discovering" Australia and the inhabitants of numerous islands around the world.

And, there is a very good reason why history tends to heavily biased towards the experiences of Europeans that isn't really racial. Europeans excelled at keeping written records. That is also why India and China tend to get a lot of attention concerning history. It is the same reason the Egyptians, Hebrews, Romans, and Greeks dominate the study of Ancient history. It is much easier to study and understand people when they leave you actual written words that they wrote. The Nazis took the European need for written records to its apex which is why WWII is studied so much, thinks to all the written records from both sides it is the most easily accessible war for historians to study.

I was walking around with a very cute twink in DC, when we passed Ford's Theater. I mentioned that was the place where Lincoln was shot. He was confused, because he had thought Lincoln had been shot in a movie theater.

R127 The cute and attractive can get by with it, but no one likes an ugly obese dumb person.

Reading threads like this makes me glad I'm old and won't be around too much longer.

R129 Young people feel similarly about you. So negative, so nasty, and you were the ones who fucked things up too.

WHO do you think were in charge of teaching these kids history? Why do we blame the kids and not their negligent educators?

r131 Because lazy passivity is no excuse.

(But we do blame negligent educators too.)

R132 I think this 'lazy passivity' is largely invented in your head. You see the majority, not the minority. Every time in history there have been a majority of people who don't care and don't want to know, who are only interested in themselves, their hookups, kids, family, and gossiping about others.

R131 The problem lies with the educators, but they are also bound to things like cancel culture and ultra liberal ideology. In many school systems, if you try to teach US History outside of a focus on slavery and the Civil Rights movement, it would be frowned upon by peers or the policy makers above.

That was already evident when I was still in public schools in the 90s. We didn't learn about anything that wasn't focused on multiculturalism, racism, etc., when it came to basic US or world history, at least not at the high school level.

I am guessing, today, a lot is focused on current events, as well. Like George Floyd and other incidents.

In general, it does seem (like others have commented) that there is a lack of people being proactively corrected about things they misunderstand or are just wrong about. The example of thinking MLK Jr. being a president, and someone thinking Alexander Hamilton and other founding fathers were not white because they learned about them from a Broadway show, are likely typical of the younger folks out there. They need to be told that they are wrong and what the facts are, but all the more reason to address it in earlier years by actually teaching real history based on fact and not feelings. It's basically too late once the kids are graduating High School and essentially complete dumbasses despite being told left and right how special and intelligent they are (because it would hurt feelings otherwise).

R134 FFS, this has NOTHING to do with 'cancel culture'. You simply failed to teach young people proper history. Also your generation were in power. You had the power. Cancel culture was something you agreed to follow or not. And besides, it wasn't really around when those people were kids.

R135 Oh, it was starting back then. The teachers were only allowed to cover certain subject matter because it was politically correct to do so. If they didn't, I am sure they would have been pushed out for not towing that line. So it was alive and well back then, it just didn't have the name it has today.

R136 Who said that the teachers were only allowed to cover certain subject matter? I am 99.9% sure it wasn't the little kids. So why are you blaming them for things that older generations decided?

Sorry, calling out the bullshit on both sides.. Yes, people are taught basic history. They aren’t absorbing and retaining it anymore. That’s the real problem.

R138 So why and how did your generation fail so badly?

R137 I am not blaming the kids for what the adults responsible have done, but they still should look up basic facts and educate themselves. Doubt that is happening. And when these kids become educators themselves, the cycle continues. Things probably get worse. I blame the ultra liberals who gained positions of power in education after growing up in the 60s and 70s. The hippies took over. The focus turned away from teaching facts and more to focusing on feelings and bringing (their) politics into things. Historical facts went out the window.

Baby boomers are horrible: they blame everyone except themselves. If you think that the younger generation sucks: it was YOU who brought them up.

I'm a history professor.

The level of ignorance of history and current events astounds me at times, but it's generational -- not just millennials or Get Z

My mother who had graduate degrees and was born in the early thirties told me that she had little idea of what happened to European Jews during WWII (an event she lived through). It was only in the mid-fifties when she began a career with a major American and global company that she learned about it. A colleague who was a European Jew rolled his shirtsleeves up. My mother noticed a series of numbers tattooed on his arm. She asked him what it was, and he told her about the Holocaust.

Her story is illustrative of what most Americans knew of the Holocaust in WWII. By and large the public remained ignorant of the extent of the persecution of the Jews. Part of the reason is that the government did not want to cast the war as an effort to save the Jews, because of the level of prejudice in this country against them.

As for me today with college-aged students, there are those who know a great deal. And, then, there are those who do not care one bit. I try to get them more engaged in learning about the past because it makes you more engaged as a citizen today.

The whole let's-not-teach-the-bad-stuff idea isn't new. They just gave it a new name - critical race theory - and actually got school districts and entire states to approve it.

Google "Know Alabama" and look at articles from the early 70s where they were pulling the same shit.

Critical Race Theory is 'let's not teach the bad stuff' ????

I thought it was the opposite.

You know, an old fart like me had a Liberal Arts education, and so I will comment here. IMO the whole education system got fucked up when parents, and local school boards got into the act of telling teachers what to teach. I went to Catholic schools all the way through college. I had nuns and priests (or brothers) teaching me. (No, I was never molested.) My parents came to school quarterly for parent-teacher talks. if you were a discipline problem they'd discuss it. If you were doing well they'd say, "Oh, he's doing well. Maybe improve that penmanship." And they' d visit a bit or try to answer questions. But what did not happen was parents getting involved in the content of what was taught. No one ever questioned them. Ever. If you had problems with how they taught or what they taught or problems following the rules you were politley invited to seek educational opportiunities elsewhere. And we had corporal punishment and detention. Those nuns could torture you by rapping you knuckles just the right way with a pencil. They weilded yardsticks like experts, And they could pitch an eraser at you head with dealy consequences. Twisting and pulling you by your ear, pinching you, pulling your hair, and shaking you? Hell yes. Dentention consisted of helping the janitorial staff clean the restrooms. Pulling weeds. scrubbing floors in the classrooms. etc. Kids who dropped out of school it was as if they commited a crime . It was stigmatized, so was being held back a year. They upheld certain standards and had certain expectations about conduct and grooming. We learned a lot and I am forever grateful.

Sorry, I meant that the conservative backlash was let's not teach the bad stuff.

Apologies, I didn't quite phrase that right.

R145 here. Forgot to mention that public humiliation was one of their standard methods of discipline, and no one could bully you as effectively as Sister Mary Catherine or Sister De Paul. Even now I shudder. Because they'd single out a kid, and mmake them stand up before the entire class and be disciplined and singled out. I often wondered if they used tactics that were developed during WW1 & 2 in Europe? Or maybe the Germans learned from the nuns. LOL!

R145, I agree with you, except for the part about allowing educators to physically interact, like pulling ears/hair. Teachers can be effectively intimidating and can teach the right lessons without physical abuse.

R147 How old are you? Unless you're super old, neither the nuns nor the Germans had anything to do with each other.

It's strange that you think that physical discipline creates superior results even though there's no scientific research to support that... maybe you're the one with the inferior education. The person who thinks he had the superior education just because it's what he grew up with....

R148, we didn't know it was abuse. I guess it could be traumatizing, but back then who knew? it wasn't as if we were traumatized every single day. I loved school and looked forward to it.

r139, I'm a millennial.

The book I was talking about.....

A few years ago, a 30-something attorney colleague said she had never heard of the Irish potato famine before. I wasn’t all that impressed with her to begin with but this gave me an even lower estimation of her

[quote]It's overwhelming. I'm in a constant battle with myself: do I desire depth or breadth?

Don't worry, honey, every gay bottom has the same dilemma.

[quote] proper history.

R135 What is your definition of 'proper history.'?

[quote] And when these kids become educators themselves, the cycle continues.

I've heard people blame Mr Spock for this laissez-faire attitude in the 1950s.

But others praise Friedrich Fröbel and his 'kindergartens' who was active in the 1850s but was officially adopted (in Australia at least) in the 1910s.

When they do polls today and there are large percentages of people who do not know about the holocaust or who fought in WWII I lose all respect for the person. A person like R142’s mother makes sense because everything happening and that happened in Germany was broadcast all the time, but if anyone born in the second half of the 20th century and beginning of this one who reaches adulthood in a western country, without knowing about those two things has to either be incredibly stupid or wilfully ignorant. You learn about it not only in school, but also culture, movies, tv, video games, comic books, are all filled with WWII era events.

Education before the teachers unions.

Sorry “wasn’t broadcast all the time”

This is not a new development.

It really started with the Reagan Administration. The whole idea was to keep people from learning too much, because a dumb country was a country who would be easily swayed and believe anything they were told. And look what happned. (It works for religion too.)

R161 = Conspiracy Theorist

R161 My entire education took place post-Reagan, in a red state, yet I still learned history.

I have found that people under forty know absolutely nothing about any person or event that predates the Spice Girls.

Nothing.

BonniePrinceCharlie -

Wasn't it that Americans had some idea of what Germany was doing, but didn't understand the scope right away?

I know returning soldiers told people what they saw. The killing of Jews was known, obviously, but it took some time before people understood it was 6 million, no?

Was it more when the trials happened?

*and by Americans I mean man/woman on the street

Interestingly. It was a Black regiment of soldiers, American GIs, who first entered the concentration camp and found piles of dead bodies, and people describ ed as walking skeletons when they arrived. The grotesque horrors unfolded gradually as a whole network of camps was discovered. I wish I could remember which camp they entered. I think it was Buchenwald. I think they were part of Patton's army, 784th tank battalion was Black and I think they were part of the 731 regimmment called...Black Panthers. When we talk about Dachau, Treblinka, Auschwitz, etc. I learned it wasn't just one bulding or one complex, but a whole lot more. They were large. Vast.

This is another story about the African American soldiers liberating Holland, but it confirms that they were there in Europe fighting.

...and they were treated like shit when they returned home.

Thanks, 'Murica!

Here, for no reason at all.

Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson and Stormé DeLarverie as seen in the Cervini version of "Book of Queer" showing in five episodes on 'discovery+'.

That must be a JOKE r171!

This photo gives "performative dress-up" a bad name!

R142 - there was no CNN back then. My dad who was a bright adolescent at the time, told me concentration camp "stuff" was vague rumors at most.

I worked with a high school teacher who announced to the students that "World War 1 started because Hitler got mad." When she caught me exchanging glances with another coworker, she repeated her claim again with a "I dare you to challenge me!" look.

Her baseline aide, who had just received a teaching credential, turned to me one day and asked, "What country is Dublin in?" She at least had the sense to look embarrassed.

[quote]Education now is vocational training, even for professional jobs.

I went to vocational school for my 11th and 12th grades. We had mandatory Civics and American History courses. I also read non-fiction and historical books for fun, unlike many college students I've known who didn't read anything beyond assigned course material, little of it concerning history.

[quote] unlike many college students I've known who didn't read anything beyond assigned course material

Most college students today aren't even reading the assigned course material. Many of them don't even buy the required books.

Another reason why many don't know much or care about history in the US is the way history courses are taught in High School. Textbooks that are not well written and bogged down in triumphalist and inevitable America is great narrative and teachers who put an emphasis on getting students to memorize facts until they take and pass the test and move on to the next period of American history.

A good book covering this topic, and I'm surprised not to see it cited in this thread (unless I missed it somehow) is Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loeven. Well worth reading.

I took a course on African Politics at uni (to use a phrase I find annoying) that included a blank map countries-and-capitals test. I find the nations of former Yugoslavia, and Soviet "stans" confusing. I'm not up on my Chinese dynasties, and get confused between Suharto and Sukarno. Otherwise, I do okay.

Those of you who watch Jeopardy know that the brainiac contestants can come up with some real doozy responses!

R177 So you don't like a "triumphalist history". Do you want a demure, timid, mousy, passive history?

To me the only correct way to discuss US history is that it has been the progressive expansion of personal and political liberty. It isn't triumphalist nor dystopian, it is just how the broad stroke of our history has unfolded, and to be told correctly you have to cover each era's failings, to show how they progressed.

Yes. We have to take some 'broad strokes' to fit a history between two book covers.

But we need to avoid Dr Eric Cervini and that '1619 Woman' who push their own agendas.

R181Personally, while I disagree with many agenda driven historians, there is a time to read their books. That time is not in the classroom and it should not be taught by the educator.

r144 Limited space, limited time... some groups get left behind as others are expanded. There are many conflicts as there are many different proposals for how it to be implemented and what gets condensed, if not outright cut. That's where some of the asian protest against it originated. Both left and right oversimplify it. Though, it's just as much of an example for the debate because even among proponents of it.. they can't agree on the details... some only want select narratives like the activist voice, others want it more broadly expanded, some believe Stonewall should be included with long debated individuals at the center of debate, and so on.

Much of the confusion made much worse by the modern discovery channel hyperbole style that turns up the drama and turns down the facts as it blurs the line between history as a science and history as entertainment. Even the news which has a claim of objectivity presents facts as a drama that may or could have happened. All this is contributing to confusion about everything. When one’s very attention is a commodity information itself is just an item of the market. I blame, as usual, Capitalism.

[quote]I find the nations of former Yugoslavia, and Soviet "stans" confusing.

r178 There are only five Central Asian stans and six countries of former Yugoslavia, what exactly is confusing about that? I was frustrated, but never confused, when I was learning all the fifty US states and their capitals. It's simple memorisation, really.

There are some wonderful books ut here about seminal events. For example, Joseph Ellis Founding Brothers. Excellent take on our Founders. And McCullough's 1776 was extraordinary! We were "this close" to losing that war. (Maybe we'd have been better off being controled by the UK. We'd be Canadian - ish.

R185, it's not a matter of memorizing the capitals so much, as which countries include which territory.

[quote] Long ago in another century when I went to school, American history and Government were required.

My educator friends say that No Child Left Beind has fucked up the American education system. Things have changed drastically for schools/teachers since NCLB. Now, it's all about graduating as many people as you can to boost your stats.

[quote] I blame, as usual, Capitalism.

Capitalists know that 80% of the population are brainless sheep so they cater to the bigger market.

I remember seeing old newsreels of the soldiers leaving the camps and all the really skinny starved bodies being put in mass graves and burned. they were showing those newsreels right after the war. I was born in 1950 so it was historical news but I would have thought everyone would have seen or heard about the Holocaust.

I'm like a lot of posters that say they haunted libraries. I used to be curious about everything and I would make lists of things I wanted to look up and then haunt the library to answer all the questions I had. I was in my early 40s when the internet came into being and I was so excited because it meant I didn't have to wait to haunt the library. Now I am retired and drive myself crazy looking things up all day. I used to be a voracious reader but my eyesight is getting worse so I don't read much anymore.

Dear R190, you and I are in the minority. I estimate 5%.

R165, Allied governments had an awareness of what was going on. I had a professor in college who was a member of the Polish underground. He was smuggled into the camps and smuggled out to later meet Churchill and FDR. But even then, Allied governments thought devoting their energies to the prosecution of the war would more quickly end what was going on with the Jews.

Even after the war, there wasn't much talk of the Holocaust. It was so traumatizing to the victims, that many did not talk about it. It was when their children in the 1960s began to question their parents about what happened to them that the Holocaust becomes better known. On a popular level, it's only in 1970 and 1972 that popular novels dealing with the Holocaust -- QB VII and The Odessa File -- gain traction.

Most Americans do not know much about massacres of civilians by American troops in the Korean War or in Vietnam besides My Lai.

And don't forget contemporary events. Just ask someone what they know about Yemen. Most have no idea what's going on there.

[quote] I had a professor in college who was a member of the Polish underground.

What year was that?

[quote]Just ask someone what they know about Yemen. Most have no idea what's going on there.

I'm prepared to concede that not everyone will prioritise taking an interest in current events in every country in the world. It's that most people don't have any idea what's going on in their own countries that worries me. That's how politics got to where it is today.

And I'd like to say to R162--what R161 said is not conspiracy. It's fact and it coincided with the massive downgrading (and up-pricing) of humanities studies at universities for exactly the same reason. It happened in all English-speaking countries at around the same time (the Reagan years) and the trend hasn't reversed. That's a bit of history you perhaps should look at more closely.

[quote] massive downgrading (and up-pricing) of humanities studies at universities

Who did this? And why?

R195 Corporations are the ones downgrading education because they do not have enough jobs for a highly educated workforce. Just look at the crap they try to pass off as math now.

Of course now they are replacing people with machines so we will just have a country of unemployed people with no education.

Reagan introduced a lot of "reforms" into our social and cultural life that were definitely white supremacist. You see everyone puts it all on Trump, but the GOP has been heading down that road for a long time. poorly educated people are much easier to manipulate. And when you have a service based economy, and no more labor unions, you don't need to educate workers. The thing is, Trump is crude and heavy handed and obvious. People like Reagan, and Karl Rove, adn the Bushes, have better manners, and they speak softly, and they even might use tact. But they basically see the world the same way Trump does.

[quote] People not knowing about major historical events

And there are people (such as in the last few posts) who know bits about historical and current events and make cock-eyed conclusions about them.

R195, in my country (and, I assume, in the UK) it was government policy, achieved through changes in funding and staffing levels. The same governments reduced overall subsidies to universities, which previously were so heavily subsidised they were more or less (arm's-length) government-owned, and made them dependent on student fees. The highest fees can be levied from overseas students, who were largely interested in business, engineering, etc, which swung the focus further still from humanities. I am not sure how it occurred in the States.

R196, corporations never had anything to say about the study of humanities. They wouldn't know a humanities subject if it was free with their Cornflakes. Your point is true, but tangential to R195's question.

[quote] poorly educated people are much easier to manipulate.

you just described the Southern Democrat education plan from Reconstruction until the Civil Rights era. And, really I don't think it is a Democrat or Republican thing, now. Each want their base ignorant and distracted. As much as modern Democrats talk about equality and education, inner city schools ARE horrible. But, so are rural ones. Your best hope of going to a good school is if you live somewhere suburbia, as long as it hasn't decayed yet.

I knew an older man who had been active in Southern politics from around the 1940s-70s. He said he voted for segregation for a while but it was never something he cared about and he had no problem dropping it. But, he said what frightened so many Southern elites about integration was that they were afraid " the rednecks and the N$%%@%s," would become friends and get educated. While poor whites at the time, of course, went to the nicer white schools they were also encouraged to drop out as soon as possible. Because nothing scared the people in power like the thought of a mass of educated rednecks or N$%%@%s, to them that was just the waste of good mill or field hands. Poor whites and blacks in NC had joined together in 1897 to elect a GOP governor, which caused Jim Crow legislation to get passed everywhere in the South to stop that from happening again.

R199 I do think corporations have been influencing the humanities, to try to steer excess smart people in that direction. I mean look at the people funding any group or professor who makes the news for something crazy I bet you at least two random corporations or their foundations have given them funding.

AIDS? Never Heard of it. Why should I care that an entire generation of Gay Men are dead because of the Governments inaction?

[quote] an entire generation of Gay Men are dead because of the Governments inaction?

Speaking of People not knowing about major historical events, consider they are dead because of stupid irresponsible behavior going on now two generations. Monkeypox being just the latest illustration.

I agree, R202. Some people aren't able to take responsibility for their own actions and demand that someone else look after them and their foolish decisions.

[quote]R103: Is this the same friend who wanted to name her baby Treblinka?

𝐌𝐚𝐝𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞 (1990) is a funny film, R103. ;)

[quote]R194: And I'd like to say to [R162]--what [R161] said is not conspiracy. It's fact and it coincided with the massive downgrading (and up-pricing) of humanities studies at universities for exactly the same reason. It happened in all English-speaking countries at around the same time (the Reagan years) and the trend hasn't reversed. That's a bit of history you perhaps should look at more closely.

Correct. Here a discussion of it at the state level, in California, under a certain governor:

Then he became President, and it went nationwide.

Back on the late, great IMDb message boards - the 'Religion, Faith, and Spirituality' board - there was an infamously ignorant and offensive poster in her early 60s informally known as 'the most awful woman in New Zealand' (Victorina32, Ada_Lovelace were among her socks). Supposedly credentialed in grammar and a practicing substitute teacher, she believed that formal public education and literacy in general was almost universal since biblical times, and that the bible taught both that the Earth was a globe, as well as heliocentrism as a model. In the main, she claimed that most everything we know today about the Earth, space, planetary bodies, the Sun, etc, was all known and taught by believers in biblical times, and that illiteracy was unknown since that point - at least unknown anywhere that Christianity had spread.

Seeing people blame the tragedy of AIDS on lack of personal responsibility is really nauseating. Especially here.

Ronnie& Nancy had alot to do with that, R208....I hope they are being raped in HELL

[quote]R156: I've heard people blame Mr Spock for this laissez-faire attitude in the 1950s.

'Mr Spock'?

R190, those films of the camps' liberation were not seen until long after the war. They were thought to horrific for newsreels.

The full horror of the camps was not fully in the consciousness of Americans because the images were not in general circulation, because of the standards of the time.

With time (and the Vietnam War) standards changed and those films were shared. This is why in America awareness and outrage reached its peak so long after the fact.

It is sad that awareness is not fading. In Florida, Holocaust education in the schools is mandated. We cannot talk about slavery or gay rights---but we MUST talk about the Holocaust.

^^^^It is sad that awareness IS fading.

Sorry for typo

Yes banning talk about slavery is nuts, especially in the South where the remnants are all around you. If you go to Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, etc. it is unavoidable. Charleston was the gateway, the port of entry for something like 95% of all slaves. The auction blocks still stand. If you visit the City of Charleston you cannot avoid it. Look across the harbor and there's Fort Sumpter.

[quote]I was so young when I learned about the Underground Railroad, I took it literally. I think I was in the second or third grade and I thought slaves were using underground railroad tunnels to travel. Same with the Hiroshima bombings. I think that was 4th grade.

I don't understand your last sentence. What was your misunderstanding about the Hiroshima bombing(s)?

I was in high school when I read John Hersey's book, Horishima. It was a graphic and devastating account of the bombing and how the Japanese people were affected. I had a cool Lit teacher and she made us read it.

Hershey's Hiroshima was assigned a lot in Catholic schools back in the 1970s.

I was dating a guy and one day he began a sentence with 'I have a dream....' I interrupted him and jokingly said 'what, are you Martin Luther King jnr.?', he said, 'who is Martin Luther King jnr.?' !!! When I told him, his excuse for not knowing was that he never took history at school! My brother, who has a masters in history, was holidaying in Hawaii and was surprised to know that Pearl Harbor was there!

R216, that's exactly when/where I read it! Sorry for that typo "Hiroshima."

Most of what I've know about history I learned from DataLounge.

Let me try that again:

Most of what I know about history I learned from DataLounge.

Southern Democrats didn't want to end slavery. I think they are partly for his crow. The democrats or at least the southern democrats were a racist party at one time.

[quote] Charleston was the gateway, the port of entry for something like 95% of all slaves.

About 388.000 slaves were imported to America out of over ten million transported. For every one who went through Charleston about five would go through Rio de Janeiro. Should Carnival become a slave memorial ?

R221 Jim Crow was entirely a Democratic affair. The whole point of Jim Crow's beginning was to strip black people of their vote because they voted Republican, at that time, as strongly as they vote Democrat now. There was also a fairly large number of poor whites who voted GOP and were largely stripped of their votes as well.

I must say the Democratic leadership of the party in the 1960s had some balls. Democrats get all the credit for passing the civil rights laws of the 1960s, even though Republicans in Congress voted in huge numbers for those bills and had actually been proposing them for decades either in Congress or their platform. Yet, the only reason those bills were needed was because of the actions of some in the Democratic Party. Has any party ever created the problem, let it go on for decades and then reaped the praise for ending it? It would've been like if the blacks of South Africa had embraced F. W. de Klerk and the National Party, because they chose to finally end apartheid, over Mandela and the ANC who had been pushing against it for decades.

Of course Southern Dems, were upholdiong Jim Crow. Listen. The only way Roosevelt was able to get backing for his New Deal programs was to maintain "separate but equal."

JFK relied on an alliance with Southern Dems to get Judges appointed

I’m not saying National Democrats didn’t have valid political reasons for allowing the Southern Democrats to do what they did only, that it was all within the same party. And I’ve always found it strange that isn’t pointed out more.

"AIDS was created when a cat escaped the zoo in New Zealand and bit a monkey. It was right before Harvey Milk was elected Mayor of Sacramento. And then Nancy Reagan ran for President from Iowa and won the popular vote after the Florida Recount"------Idiot Fem Gays of 2022

It's been"Social Studies" for ages, OP. Last time I taught, about the turn of the century, administrators and their week-end "Education courses" promoted "themes" instead of chronological history.

Facts in US public schools are anathema.

OP, People don't watch TV, either. They use the big rectangle as a movie screen.

R228, AS IF they would know of a place named "New Zealand!"

There ya go. A Master's in history and NOT knowing where Pearl Harbor is.

Quintessential American education. And American lack of self-learning. Schools can't teach everything, FGS.

Quick question everyone: Who were the mugwumps? Do you know? If not, why not?

R27, Knowledge of any kind matters. Just keep on keepin' on, and no, you can't know everything!

I'm similar, but whereas I used to read voraciously as they used to say, I have to force myself off the Internet in order to read a book now.

But I'd better get cracking, as I just received seven paperbacks of Hitchcock film analysis, to add to my extant ten. I get on jags.

The Mugwumps were political. ..okay, then I had to Google.

And there's the rub: "Why do I have to know it when I can just use Google?!" asks the Post-Post-Modern Student.

It's true r234. I love what Noam Chomsky once said about this kind of thing, when somebody was saying that Americans are just too dumb and don't know anything. He replied that a whole lot of Americans have a really encyclopedic knowledge of sports and athletes and really everything and anything to do with sports. It's kind of amazing really. It's definitely not a lack of ability to learn or hold a ton of knowledge. It's just that some subjects captivate and some don't.

History has always captivated me. Sports, never. But I don't think that makes me particularly "knowledgeable" or aware compared to somebody with no particular interest in that.

In terms of knowing facts and "relevance," Barbara "Babs" Bush is the Ur-Eschewer.

[quote]R233: Who were the mugwumps?

"Benway!"

The 'mugwump,' a person who remained aloof or independent from party politics, was redefined by William Burroughs in his novel 'Naked Lunch' as one who was detached from traditional gender preferences; sexually ambivalent.