That was my score on this quiz. It really should have been 32 — I somehow misread the question on enemies during WW II, and read it as “allies.” And I accordingly was frustrated because none of the answers were correct (I just assumed that they meant the USSR instead of “Russia”). The only question I really missed (in terms of the actual knowledge, as opposed to misreading) was the one about the anti-Federalists. What’s dismaying, but not surprising, is how poorly not just the general public, but academics do. It would explain the disastrous results of many elections.
Category Archives: Education
The Bump On The Road To Nowhere
Thoughts from Mark Steyn on the state of the economy:
The Department of Education issues search warrants? Who knew? The Brokest Nation in History is the only country in the developed world whose education secretary has his own Delta Force. And, in a land with over a trillion dollars in college debt, I’ll bet it’s got no plans to downsize.
Nor has the TSA. A 24-year-old woman has been awarded compensation of $2,350 after TSA agents exposed her breasts to all and sundry at the Corpus Christi Airport security line and provided Weineresque play-by-play commentary. “We regret that the passenger had an unpleasant experience,” said a TSA spokesgroper, also very Weinerly. But hey, those are a couple of cute bumps on the road, lady!
The American Dream, 2011: You pay four bucks a gallon to commute between your McJob and your underwater housing to prop up a spendaholic, grabafeelic, paramilitarized bureaucracy-without-end bankrupting your future at the rate of a fifth of a billion dollars every hour.
In a sane world, Americans would be outraged at the government waste that confronts them everywhere you turn: The abolition of the federal Education Department and the TSA is the very least they should be demanding. Instead, our elites worry about sea levels.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
How A Teachers’ Rally
It’s another institution that has been taken over, and destroyed by, the left.
Ten Misused Words In English
The only one of these that I may have misused in the past is “bemused.” The rest I already had down cold.
Two Thirds Of A Century
I remember when I was a kid, and my mother saying, “I can’t believe it’s been thirty years since D-Day.” She had been a WAC, stationed in Egypt at the time. My father (whom she had not yet met) was shooting at Messerschmitts and other German fighters from the waist of a B-25 over Italy, Romania and other eastern European countries. The success of the invasion was the beginning of the end of the war in Europe and, despite the last gasp at the Battle of the Bulge the following winter, essentially sealed Germany’s fate.
Well, she’s gone now (for over twenty years), as is my dad (over thirty) and so are most of the participants in that event. The youngest of them are in their mid-eighties, and slowly, the greatest, most destructive war in history is passing from living memory. How many veterans of Gettysburg were still alive in 1930? That battle, combined with the fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi to Grant the day after that famous union victory, similarly sealed the fate of the Confederacy. It is said that after Reconstruction, Vicksburg refused to fly an American flag for decades, until the thirties. If so, it’s probably because, by then, few were around to remember that ignominious and infamous day in the city’s history.
The passing of that generation would be less poignant, and unsettling, if we were preserving their memories, and properly teaching our children history. But given the disastrous state of both public education and academia, we cannot rely on the next generation knowing anything about that longest day:
I playfully launched in to a mock exam, using the small images of each of the war’s principals from the front cover. “Okay, who’s this?” I demanded, pointing to the visage of Winston Churchill.
From my friend, silence. And a blank stare. ”Uh, alright,” I hesitated unevenly, “how about him?” I pointed to Stalin.
“Oh, Franklin Roosevelt, I think,” offered my friend earnestly.
Mental panic was setting in. “And this?” I pointed to Hirohito.
“ . . . Gandhi?”
Our impromptu exam ended with howls of laughter from my chair, and a red face in the other.
You don’t need to be a history fanatic to recognize most of those men. And if you’re, say, an elementary-ed student expected to teach the subject, it’s helpful to know the subject, right? And preferably before you pick up a book on it . . . “for kids.”
But here’s the thing: my friend is smart. An “A” student, attending a respected university.
For all the talk about lesson planning, creative learning, compassionate engagement, etc., from the education reform crowd, how often is it asked: Do our teachers know their subjects?
Sadly, the answer in many cases is “no.” Worse yet, the texts are too focused on the contributions of lesbians and African-Americans and Siberian-Americans and on how awful and wart-filled is our history (we enslaved people, but didn’t lose six-hundred thousand white men to free them) to pay attention to things like the ideas of those evil slave-holding Founders, or the people who stormed a beach sixty-seven years ago to liberate a continent from totalitarianism. And the price we’ll pay for it in the future may well be the need for another D-Day, particularly when we have a president who seems to be unfamiliar with that history, or that of the Middle East.
[Update a while later]
Here is Ernie Pyle’s dispatch, published almost a week after the fact.
[Update early afternoon]
More D-Day memories. There are as many amazing stories from that war as there were participants. I’m actually a little surprised that there are as many as 1.7M vets left.
A Teachable Moment
I wish that I were more surprised about things like this. The educational sytem in this country, particularly the part that educates teachers, is a catastrophe. Which is the way the collectivists want it.
About The Yale Frat Boys
What the president of Yale should have said.
Note, as is often the case, that opposition to freedom of expression comes from the left.
The Importance Of Ad Placement
Some unfortunate examples. May not be safe for work–they’re laugh out loud.
[Update a few minutes later]
Also, awesomely inappropriate test answers from kids.
[Both via Geek Press]
On War
A book review, of an old book:
On War is shaped by Clausewitz’s encounter with the history and ideas of his times; it is also shaped by his experience in one of the first truly modern bureaucracies. (One of the achievements of Frederick the Great that so impressed contemporaries was the meticulous organization of the Prussian army and state.) The relationship of individual genius and vision to bureaucratic routine is a serious strategic problem in the modern world. The virtues that make a great military commander are, as Clausewitz notes, intensely personal: imagination and moral courage being perhaps the rarest and most valuable. These are perhaps the worst qualities for an aspiring bureaucrat to have.
There are desk generals and battle generals, and the unequal struggle between them is a recurring problem — and not just in military organizations. Desk generals excel in the arts of bureaucratic warfare, stick close to the conventional wisdom in all ways, and were brilliantly described in two unforgettable Gilbert and Sullivan songs: Modern Major General and The First Lord’s Song. In times of peace these timeserving mediocrities rise inexorably to the top; wars usually begin with a painful shakeout while the beribboned and bemedaled lunkheads demonstrate their hopeless incapacity at the true military art. Then and only then do the unclubbable and unconventional officers whose only virtue is their ability to somehow win battles gradually edge to the fore and the Grants and the Shermans elbow past the Popes and the McClellans.
In terms of space, NASA has been at peace since the late sixties, and hasn’t had the necessary crisis to bring forth the war-fighting generals, though the current budget crunch may make it happen. We’re starting to see some signs of it (e.g., Phil McAlister). The problem remains, though, that space isn’t important. Until it is, we won’t take it seriously.
High-School English Class
Death to it.
This is what happens when you have teachers with degrees in “Education,” instead of actual fields that require thought, logic and knowledge.