Community Chat

[birkin baby]

As a history major with a secondary teaching  certification, this doesn't surprise me. It does make me sad.  (I am not a History teacher...no way!)

[sidsmom]

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@Chrystaltree2 wrote:

Maybe the station deliberately chose the stupid answer....it made for better TV.  

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...and gives us something to 'chew on' this evening! =

[Noel7]

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@Lila Belle wrote:

July 4th was not the date the Declaration was signed but the the day it was adopted and read/announced to the public.

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^^^^^^^^^^ THIS

And it's the FOURTH not the FORTH

[september]

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@AKgirl2 wrote:

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@september wrote:

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@BalletBabe wrote:

They are not teaching math anymore either.  Buy something for 5.25 and give them 10.25 and they don't know what to do with it. 

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Well, that is completely false.  I'm the parent of a student who is about to get her phd in particulate matter physics.  

You can google it!  Yes, she has been taught "math"!

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Wow, what an achievement!  Congratulations to your daughter, and how proud you must be👏🎓👏

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Thank you!  I am, but I'm also aware of how many other awesome students we have in this country.  Don't like to see all the young people grouped together in a lump...as some kind of stupid mass.  

[Mominohio]

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@september wrote:

Lots of students pay attention in history class.

This is true now, and it was true when I was in school (graduated from high school almost 40 years ago)

What's different now?  The internet, and all the people online who make fun of those who don't know their facts.  

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It isn't really making fun of, and it isn't all about mindless 'facts' but they don't teach and many people (not only kids, I've seen similar type of interviews with people 50 and over with like results) don't know even the basic ideas, theories, and principles upon which our nation was founded. 

The fact that someone doesn't know the exact date the document was signed vs when it was written, vs when it was announced is really trivial in comparison to the lack of understanding of the period of history and what the forces were behind what was happening that gave birth to the new nation.

[Reba055]

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@pitdakota wrote:

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@Reba055 wrote:

They aren't teaching anything in history class anymore apparently. What's worse, I saw on TV a few days ago that college history majors have almost no history classes 😳

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I don't know where that may or may not be, but even if true it would be very rare.  And needless to say, that college or university would not be regionally accredited.   Even regional accreditation requires a minimum number of hours in the major.  And all of the major colleges I know of certainly require their history majors to take history courses. 

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@pitdakota  I know, I couldn't believe it. Here's a piece I just googled:

Less than one-third of the top colleges and universities in the United States require history majors to take even a single course in American history.
In a new report, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) finds that only 23 undergraduate history programs at 76 of the colleges ranked highest by U.S. News & World Report require even a single American history course to fulfill the major.

ACTA asserts:

Many of the same institutions that do not require history majors to take a course on United States history do specify that they must complete coursework on areas outside the United States. And many allow some very strange, highly specialized topics to substitute for a course on the United States. History majors at Williams College could choose “Soccer and History in Latin America: Making the Beautiful Game.” At Swarthmore, one choice could be “Modern Addiction: Cigarette Smoking in the 20th Century.” At Bowdoin, it might be “Lawn Boy Meets Valley Girl.”

Of the 23 schools that do require a U.S. History class to fulfill the history major, 11 allow other classes such as “Hip-Hop, Politics, and Youth Culture in America” (University of Connecticut) or “Mad Men and Mad Women” (Middlebury College) to fulfill the requirement, reports ACTA.

“Historical illiteracy is the inevitable consequence of lax college requirements, and that ignorance leads to civic disempowerment,” Michael Poliakoff, ACTA’s president-elect, states in a press release. “A democratic republic cannot thrive without well-informed citizens and leaders. Elite colleges and universities in particular let the nation down when the examples they set devalue the study of United States history.”

[september]

I know for a fact that most of the kids who started high school with me, would get answers to basic history questions, wrong!  Almost half of the students who started high school with me, didn't even graduate.

Where my kids went to high school, the graduation rate was almost 98%, and they also had to take a high school exit exam to receive their diplomas.  

[Sooner]

This society doesn't value educated people now.  It is more likely to put them down.  They value people with big butts and no known contributions to the world.  

[MyGirlsMom]

I get a little annoyed when posters like to bash young people and then speak in glowing terms of their school day.  

PLEASE!

The OP said it was a variety of age groups, it wasn't just the young people.

I watched a segment on Jimmy Kimmel's show last week that not only proved how stupid were but liars as well.  One older woman said she read directly the HC had befriended Osama bin Ladin on Linkedin .  Really???? One of them has long been dead lady.