Unbelievable... the ignorance of Britons shines on

You want me to test it? I’ll probably teach a class this fall. I can give a quick knowledge quiz on the first day. Any question suggestions? How about: “Who was the Prime Minister of England at the start of WW2?”

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Why would American schoolkids have heard of Neville Chamberlain?[/quote]

They wouldn’t. That’s the point. They will assume that Churchill was Prime Minister the whole time. They won’t have a context. They won’t know who was responsible for the war and who wasn’t. they won’t know WHY things happened, but only THAT they happened, and even then only vaguely. That’s what I mean about how historical context is important. Does it matter who was giving in to Hitler’s demands? Maybe not. Does it matter that doing so only encouraged him? Well, yes, I think it does. That seems very relevant today, given the current terrorist situation. Knowing the difference between how Chamberlain handled things and how Churchill did is part of knowing who Churchill is and why he was doing what he did.

We have an election coming up in which we will be choosing between Chamberlain and Churchill (yes, the analogy is imperfect, but still useful). How are Americans supposed to make informed decisions about which policies are better if they have know knowledge of what worked in the past?

Actually, that was my fault. I should have been clearer. I get over annoyed at this tendency in my students, so I was venting in general at the attitude, not at anyone in particular.

I realise you have an election coming up, which probably makes it inadvisable to argue history with Americans this year :) . However whilst one should learn the lessons of history, it’s not always easy to discern what the lesson is. Was Chamberlain giving in to Hitler’s demands (bad thing) or buying time for Britain to rearm (good thing) or both (neutral thing)? Was the appeasers’ main mistake to underestimate Hitler, because they were focusing on the wrong threat i.e. Stalinist Russia?

Well, to get even more crazy, was Stalinist Russia the main threat after all? Maybe if we had whacked Russia instead we wouldn’t have had such a nasty cold war.

More to the point about specialized vs. unspecialized, coming down on the unspecialized side of that debate is more or less the equivalent of supporting creationism. We don’t need to argue over whether division of labor is a positive. Human history has neatly answered that question for us.

“Division of labor and specialization has increased economic growth” isn’t an answer to “to have the most satisfying life, is it better to spend all your time learning about one thing or spread it out?”

Sure, it’d probably make me more money, but devoting 100% of my life to compiler theory wouldn’t make me all that proud when I’m 80.

Yeah, but it’s not as if there’s a singular “right” answer there anyway.

There are just so many assumed value judgements attached to phrases like “the most satisfying life”.

As for the context of history being required to undersand how to make ‘good’ choices/draw ‘good’ conclusions, I couldn’t more stringently disagree. Inasmuch as the argument seems to hinge on capitulation to egomaniacal sub-populations, I can come to the same inferred ‘right’ conclusion (that doing so leads to bad things) despite the fact that I have no idea about the historical facts of WWII to any significant degree, and don’t care either.

There are many, many ways to come to valid conclusions. Not all of them come about through the set chain of facts that are habitually taught. There’s always tons of context involved (Americans learn WWII history differently than the British and far differently than the Germans; however one would suppose that if there were some underlying ‘truth’ to be taken away from the entire chain of events, they would be reasonably independant of the facts one learns.)

I’m still unconvinced that anything other than assuaging random feelings of “What is right” is accomplished by promoting the learning of a rote set of ‘important’ facts. (However, I’m pretty convinced that learning something outside of a laser sharp focus is habitually useful for most people. That doesn’t necessarily translate into the ‘standard’ curriculum idea in my mind, however. I would have gotten much more out of college by ignoring the imposed history classes altogether and instead focusing on more philosophy, however that wasn’t allowed due to some arbitrary ideas about the relative necessity of learning historical facts, most of which I’ve since completely forgotten.)

Yes, but you can learn about whatever makes you feel you’ve had a fufilling life during your leisure time. The specialized plan gives you more of that to spend. We are talking about educational theory, your comment is slightly non-sequitorish.

Having my teachers guess what not directly applicable information(History? Art? Music? Literature?) will make me feel good about myself is a waste of everyone’s time. Let me buy books or whatever for my interests, I’ll pay you to get me some skills. If I’m an idiot and I don’t have any interests, even better.

How exactly is that “better”? Being a one-track machine is “better”?

Education is the primary non-familial/social life for young people. Turning it into a factory line is at the very least highly risky… I’d say a cavalier approach toward the subject isn’t a good idea, assuming you’re not simply Trolling here.

Didn’t the Communist system pretty much take the educational approach you are proscribing? Focus on production, pragmatism, away from the arts and “non-materials”? I don’t think people laud that as a success, although perhaps you have an effective modification in mind.

Ben… a Communist? You’ve come a long long way, baby.

Up to like high school what you learn in school is socialization. That’s it. What we are basically arguing about(well, what I think we are arguing about) whether history/art/whatever should be electives or requirements in high school/college.

Pardon my rather idealistic viewpoint. But I somehow envision education to be a process in which students are to be equipped with a certain skillset in order to fulfill their lives to whatever level they deem necessary.

Let’s back up a moment, I am unfamiliar with both the British and American educational system, coming instead from a rather cloistered country of rote learning.

Now when you’re young, you won’t have much of a defined interest or a focused goal in yoru life. This period of youth caries, yes, but still at some point in time. You’re just young. You have no idea what’s good to do, what’s profitable and what in the end will make you a happy and fulfiled person. You’re probably only gonna do what’s cool, like a super spy, or a video game designer or try to crew on the starship enterprise.

The point of education here then, in a broad sense of the word, is to introduce students to the various disciplines that can be studied in depth later. Be it physics, chemistry, history or whatever nonsense the government thinks its necessary. You have to study it for a few years, realize you don’t like it, and then drop it at you grow up, choosing instead to pursue something you’re eally interested in. Like maybe practiing shooting womprats so you can be a ace X-wng pilot or something.

When you get no interest at all in the long run. Whoop dee doo for you. Slack of all you want then. Whatever dude.

That’s the high ideal of course.

Now, the education I come from is not unlike the communist system of being a pragmatic and production focus. Science is emphasized over the humanities, Maths and Biology in particular. Literature and History are taught, yes, but they are usually taught with there being only a few right answers. (you know, the ones that gets the grades, raher than a well thought out, supported, evidencial argument on why you think Iago is secretly gay for Othello, blah blah blah.)

Which brings us back to the origin of this thread. Historical fact and historical lessons. Often, we are told what exactly to think about the historical lessons offered to us. Being repeated told that history is a rote learnign subject just dulls our interest in it. We don’t want to read history and struggle to find what the “right” answer is. We wanna go home, go out, make out, play X-boxes and PS2s, sleep, learn how to speak Klingon, pretend to be wolverine, or beat up that loserish looking kid to seem cool to the others. Who cares about history?

Like mouselock says, if the memorization iof historical fact isn’t the only way to learn how to distinguish between “good” and “bad” choices. Then why study history when you have no interest in it.

Ultimately it boils down to what you can feel fulfilled with. Then the onus is on the student to go out and discover what he is interested in, pursue that.

Suppose someone is fulfilled that he has devoted his life to compiler theory by the age of 80 and feels happy about it, all the best for him. Sure, he might irk the ire of a lot of people who would label him as having tunnel vision.

The point of the education system (or theory or whatever)then is that at least at some point in his life, he was persented with the broad spectrum of disciplines, whatever others out there that he could be interested in outside the field of compiler theory. And maybe, just maybe, make him feel like a more fulfilled person. Just guessing here.

Again, that’s a high ideal.

There’s always that huge gap from understanding it to actually executing it.

It’s a free country - for adults. Kids don’t know any better, unfortunately, so they need to be forced to learn a basic grounding in everything.

What are we arguing about again?

Sure, he might irk the ire of a lot of people who would label him as having tunnel vision.

Who would those people be? I wouldn’t; great, if that’s what floats his boat. But I don’t know and have never met anyone even remotely like that.

I teach kids to roll snakes out of clay. Sometimes we even make pots out of them.
That’s the teacher’s point of view, I’ll leave the rest to you experts. :wink:

Are the clay snakes poisonous? (it IS Australia, after all)

Oh I dunno, a cold war where the other side were herding Jews into gas chambers wouldn’t have been too pleasant either.

[quote=“Mike_Hussey”]

I realise you have an election coming up, which probably makes it inadvisable to argue history with Americans this year :) . However whilst one should learn the lessons of history, it’s not always easy to discern what the lesson is. Was Chamberlain giving in to Hitler’s demands (bad thing) or buying time for Britain to rearm (good thing) or both (neutral thing)? Was the appeasers’ main mistake to underestimate Hitler, because they were focusing on the wrong threat i.e. Stalinist Russia?[/quote]

Good question, but it proves my point. These are things we need to debate and be aware of. I tend to think that giving in to Hitler caused him to be more aggresive, but you could certainly argue the other way. I think at the time Russia wasn’t considered as much of a threat, but perhaps you have evidence to the contrary? At any rate, without some knowledge of history, neither of us would be able to discuss the matter, much less use it to reflect on current issues.

BTW, despite the popular conception, not all Americans are pro-war ;)

Jason- We are discussing at the youngest 14 year olds here. These aren’t infants who will eat plastic if left alone in the room with a small object.

And I don’t see the importance of basic grounding in everything. I was taught some art history in my travels through our educational system, but I’ve completely forgotten all of it, and it just doesn’t matter to me. I would’ve been better off being taught something else during that time.

Hussey- The Soviets did their share of mass killing and mass oppress

But I’m pretty sure an argument that the USSR was the real bad guys would center around the Nazis not being so Nazi after Hitler eventually lost power. Either that or defeating both the Soviets and the Nazis.

Well you can say that about any country, the Nazis were unique in that they attempted to wipe out an entire race and enslave a second. Life in Communist Poland was hardly a bowl of cherries, but at least the Russians didn’t try to stop Polish kids going to school because slaves didn’t need to read and write.

But I’m pretty sure an argument that the USSR was the real bad guys would center around the Nazis not being so Nazi after Hitler eventually lost power. Either that or defeating both the Soviets and the Nazis.

Well it took long enough to defeat the Nazis with the Red Army fighting on our side. The Normandy invasion was not very likely to have happened, if the majority of the German army weren’t busy dying in the east.

Hussey- Uh, Soviet Russia killed millions of it’s own citizens. You can’t say that about any country.

And it took a long time to defeat the Nazis, but in retrospect another year or two of war against the Soviets would’ve been worth it if it prevented the Cold War.

Both of these observations are only available to you because you know a bit of history. Doesn’t that, if nothing else, make that history useful to you? I’m not sure what you are trying to say with your art history example. To be useful to you, do you have to like it? Want to use it? Use it every day? Every week? I would say that being educated is innately useful, and not just because you will then know certain facts that you can enjoy in your leisure time. You apply your knowledge all the time, often without any conscious thought. Granted, you can’t learn everything, but surely that’s not a good reason for not learning as much as you can. And you don’t know if it will be “useful” to you until after you learn it (assuming you are right in saying some things aren’t useful to learn, which I would disagree with).

Gary Whitta’s supreme knowledge of pornography comes to mind as an example of what Ben is talking about. I’m just sayin’.