I was stunned recently to learn that out of my seven co-workers, only three of us knew that Truman was the president when the bombs were dropped on Japan.
One answer was Nixon. One was Eisenhower. One person had no idea, so I said, “It was the president after Roosevelt.” He looked at me blankly. In his opinion, history has nothing whatsoever to do with him, so he’s not interested in it.
The person who said Nixon is the only one who doesn’t have a college degree, although I learned about WWII in high school, not college.
Okay, maybe this isn’t such a strange thing, that someone wouldn’t know the answer, but why is this bothering me so much? I am really ticked off about it!
By the way, none of these people were alive when the bombs were dropped.
I propose that all Dopers carry around a roll of red tape, cloth, etc. and whenever we find someone who is quite obviously, beyond all doubt, an ignoramus, we tag 'em around the arm.
Not to persecute or discriminate, mind you, but so that we all know who the people are who form the battlegrounds in the war against ignorance. Think that will speed things up?
I actually thought I was dumb. But turns out I’m not. The thing is, my husband is Phi Beta Kappa, Ph.D. and all that. So I feel not as smart around him.
This week one of the co-workers said that when she votes she really has no earthly idea who to vote for. It’s so hard!
This makes me furious! The information is right at your fingertips!!! Tap-tap-tap and you know where the candidate stands on any issue. If you don’t know, leave that one blank, for God’s sake!
As a TA, I ran into this kind of attitude time and again amongst college freshman. More encouraging was the fact that many students became more interested in history when they realized that it is not simply a recitation of dates and facts. Yes, it’s important to know which President dropped the bomb. Even more important is the actual analysis of *why * the bomb was dropped, and the effects it had on world events.
So I wouldn’t blame this on ignorance alone. Much of it has to do with how history is taught in schools. From what my students told me, history is not often taught from the perspective of “how does this relate to the present day?”
I’m in law school, and you would be agast at some of the common history people don’t know. For example, did you know that the Korean War came before the Vietnam War? A fellow student of mine did not. This at a top 25 school. The mind boggles.
Compared to all the other things that it’s important to know, it’s a fairly trivial matter.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but history isn’t really very important, and while it can teach lessons, they’re really only lessons fit for statesmen.
Since none of us just flickered into existence this instant, I think it’s fairly important for us to understand where we have come from in order to better understand where we are going.
You speak in cliches, old man. Anyway, even assuming that statement is correct, it does not refute mine, for as I said it is only important for statesmen to know where we are going, as only they can make the necessary preperations.
I’m going to go out on a limb, Eternal, and assume that you’re a voting citizen in a democratic republic. If you are, don’t you think it’s important that you understand history in order to separate true statesmen from salesmen who have no understanding of history themselves?
To give a more concrete example: if more Americans had been concerned with the rise of militant Deobandi and Wahabbi Islam since 1980, it seems likely to me that the government they selected would have done more to guard against that problem. As it was, we adopted an irrationally optimistic and insular attitude throughout the 1990s, while our government spent far more time dealing with issues like Social Security reform than with foreign threats. That those foreign threats caught us with our pants down two years ago is no one’s fault but our own.
Oh, you people and your “democracy,” will you ever realize that the masses are but the tools through which the aristocracy works, and that is how it will always be?
Absolutely not. I take enormous issue with that statement. I’ll even give some examples off the top of my head that translate to an up-to-date everyday experience.
Hitler convinces everyone to give whatever he wants so that he’ll finally be satisfied and shut up.
Moral: You have to make a stand when it becomes clear that people are being unreasonable. You must tell your children that they are not having their way, because it is bad for them to have it, and bad for them to learn that yelling and bullying works. They will thank you in 20 years.
Clinton has an affair with an intern he has NO intention of ever spending more than an hour with ever, and then lies under oath.
Moral: You can be fantastic at one thing, like personal relations skills, and still be extremely unwise in key areas. Being smart doesn’t make you wise.
Churchill inspires Britain to stand up to the Axis under the Blitz.
Moral: Firm leadership can inspire people to do things they didn’t know they could do. They may even learn to do them as a matter of course, without thinking about them, if they are treated like people who can. People treated like they’re better than they are tend to rise to the level of the expectations.
There’s a quote I heard, and I think it was attributed to Churchill: “History is philosophy with examples.”
Of course Truman didn’t do it, but he was the President.
Regarding statesmen needing to know history and the common people not needing to know it–I haven’t seen or heard from many statesmen recently. The news is full of shenanigans going on in Washington, DC; statesmen seem to be entirely absent.