Ahem. Just as a clarification, the magical fairy dislodges things from my nether regions.
I have no idea who is lodging them there. No, wait! The magical fairy isn’t logging in there! No…
Oh, fuck it. No, wait! Don’t do that, either!
Whoosh alright; believe it or not, I’ve never seen Animal House in its entirety. I’ve seen pieces, though, and I don’t feel like I missed much.
And lest we forget - and perhaps it’s already been mentioned - but there’s more history now than there was when some of us were in school. And more issues outside of history, too. There’s still a finite number of hours in high school to educate the lil whippersnappers, but there’s more and more stuff to educate them on.
I think most high schools near me had 2 years of history - first year went up to WWI, second year up to present. But like many of the rest of you, we didn’t get far into the present.
And college was a little better - I went to three colleges, took only one history class (twice), and we did get up to around 1980 or so.
I had a high school teacher who made us update our civics textbook the day we got it with the current members of the President’s Cabinet. He told us pointedly to keep that current for the next nine months.
One of the large-credit questions on our final exam was: “Name the Cabinet members and their Departments who have changed since September”.
Not that he was stellar in other ways, but his simple exercise in tracking the Cabinet taught me more about US Civics than the rest of the class.
Well, hot damn. At least /somebody/ learned that. :D. The biggest reason that people not knowing about Watergate and other aspects of ‘recent’ American history doesn’t phase me is that, living in New Mexico, I’m constantly exposed to Americans who apparently didn’t even make it through American geography. Seeing as the primary geography hasn’t changed much in quite some time…not knowing history doesn’t surprise me in the least. 
I don’t recall making it much further than WWII in high school, either. But I really enjoyed history, so I went out and learned quite a bit more on my own.
-Stil
In my school district, it’s world history in 7th and 10th grade, US history in 8th and 11th. Usually neither gets beyond the basics, and generally speaking “world history” means “Western European history, dipping a bit east for the assassination of the Romanovs”. My 7th grade history teacher was pretty good, with sections on African history and culture, and the pre-European Americas and such, but my 10th grade teacher was dealing with a class of morons who turned a lesson on Japanese tactics in WWII into a discussion of whether the girls on Gilligan’s Island would turn lesbian if the men died. Seriously.
Well I did manage to get straight “D’s” for 3 years in a row in math in high school, until my senior year, when I took Consumer Math & managed to even get an A one grading period.
Truthfully, I don’t recall learning all that much in my history classes in high school, it wasn’t until my 3rd year in college that I decided to major in history, simply because the weay that I looked at it, history was people, places, dates and how all 3 things related to each other. Plus, you could bullshit your way through some of the essays, which was nice. Of course , inever stopped to think what I was going to do with my degree after I graduated, but that’s a small quibble.:smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack:
(1) So I intend to post about how I learned all about watergate by reading old Doonesbury cartoons, and not one but TWO other people have already beaten me to the punch? This place is nuts!
“Forgive me, America!”
“We forgive you, Jeb”
“It’s not me I’m thinking about… it’s future former presidents”
“All evidence so far leads us to believe he’s guilty… that’s GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY”
(paraphrasing) “We at WBBY demand that women be given the equal opportunity to obstruct justice”
“Los Angeles is a scary place to grow up, especially for a sensitive young boy named H. R. Haldemann”
“We’re Richard Nixon’s secret tape club band”
(the real question: who the heck is Burt Lance, and why do I have his name stuck in my head?)
(2) re the Jay Leno segments, Jay Leno’s show is aimed pretty much at the lowest denominator, but he includes these jokes which show how stupid the people on the street are. If most of his audience were also ignorant, it wouldn’t be funny. Thus, the people on the street are significantly dumber than the average American. Fortunately. (Or, as others have suggested, deliberately acting dumb to get on TV)
“Heyyyyy… There’s a new Mexico!” – H. J. Simpson
Burt Lance was Carter’s Budget Director, and resigned under scandalous circumstances in 1977.