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Why History Education is Important


james127
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Before Christmas, I went with my church youth group on a visit to an assisted living facility in our town. I knew one of the residents there who is a veteran of WWII. A group of high school girls was standing in the hall so I pointed to his room and said, "Hey. That man in there is a WWII veteran. He was actually at Utah Beach on D-Day." Their response:

 

"What's D-Day?'

 

Keep in mind that these were girls who had been through AP (Advanced Placement) U.S. History. I actually didn't blame them. How were they to know if no one taught them?

 

You all may or may not have seen some of the history videos that I've posted on the Museums, Battlefields, and Monuments page or the veteran interviews that I've posted on the Veterans Recollections page. I've been posting them on here in case somebody might find it interesting but as a history teacher, my primary passion is seeing young people engaged and learning from history. If happen to see a video or two that you like and think is worth sharing with a young person or anyone else, please feel free to do so.

 

Here is a link to the channel: youtube.com/thehistoryunderground

 

Thanks!

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  • 3 years later...

The other problem is that today’s generation thinks that anything that happened before they were born has no merit. They also believe that everything written on Wikipedia is they truth. I guess that they don’t know that anyone can put something on wiki without any verification of authenticity. they did a 10 question easy history quiz for Harvard freshmen and out of 100 people only 5 got more than 3 questions correct. One of the questions was “ Who won the French and Indian war?”. I’m sorry for my rant, but it’s one of my pet peeves.

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I cannot tell you how many times parents ( or grandparents ) come up to me at a reenactment or living history and thank me for educating their children.  Very few have an interest until coming because nthey are not taught anything, or very little, in school.  

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As someone who has a mother who was a teacher and knows a LOT of teachers, I get very tired of the first blame is ALWAYS the schools/teachers.  History is taught throughout a child's education but US history details are not taught until high school and college. And that is only if you take a specific history class. 

 

In addition, if you were in elementary school in 1963, there has been 60 more years of history since you were in school. Vietnam War, Space exploration, Gulf War, Afghanistan, etc etc etc.... It is harder for an elementary school teacher to focus on one specific time in history when there is so much more to learn. 

 

I also get very tired of the blame always being placed on the younger generation not having any interest.  This happens with every generation blaming the "young kids". 

 

Rather than always blaming the schools/youth, speak to several teachers and find out what they have to deal with on  a daily basis regarding curriculum. It will give you a new perspective.

 

...Kat

 

 

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My wife taught public school grades 4-7 for 11 years. The amount of pressure placed on a teacher is incredible. I could write a ten page essay on this subject and it wouldn't cover half of the issues. 

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I set up at a flea market almost every week.

 

I talk to most everyone who comes in my booth and my conclusion is that 99% of Americans young and old don’t know anything or have distorted knowledge of history.

 

None of the grade or high schools I went to taught anything about WW2, zero.

 

In college there was one course on WW2 and it was watered down generalities.

 

War history is not relevant and there is no time for it.

 

The only reason I knew anything about WW2 is because my family lived under the Nazi boot and my father would talk about it.

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13 minutes ago, manayunkman said:

I set up at a flea market almost every week.

 

I talk to most everyone who comes in my booth and my conclusion is that 99% of Americans young and old don’t know anything or have distorted knowledge of history.

 

None of the grade or high schools I went to taught anything about WW2, zero.

 

In college there was one course on WW2 and it was watered down generalities.

 

War history is not relevant and there is no time for it.

 

The only reason I knew anything about WW2 is because my family lived under the Nazi boot and my father would talk about it.

Not trying to be judgemental but lumping 99% of the  Americans in with the people who go to a flea market is leaving out basically 99% of the educated Americans.   You are dealing with a very small microcosm of educated people. 

 

As I said earlier, detailed US History is not taught until college and only if you take specific courses.  If you wanted a detailed WWII course then those would be very limited to find. Sounds like you took an overview and not  a detailed course.

 

..Kat

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Kat,

 

The flea market in America is one of the few places where you get a cross section of its people.

 

Every age, race, religion, sexual preference, poor, rich, educated with degrees and people who never finished high school and most of them don’t remember much about history. 
 

Very few people remember much about about last week never mind US history lessons from grade or high school.
 

I minored in history and frankly I am disappointed in my lack of knowledge on the subject.

 

Never the less I love talking to people and my booth at the Detroit antique market is my world where I interview people and sell at the same time.


It amazes me that most people 

can’t put these events in sequence Vietnam, WW1, Korea and WW2.

 

Or my favorite sarcastic humorous question is: which came first WW1 or WW2?

 

I remember an old girlfriend who would discuss Sophocles’ plays with me and her mom butts in and says “that stuff is useless!”

 

My feeling is that most people feel the same way about history, it’s useless so they’ve forgotten anything they might have learned and feel no need to learn anything else.

 

This affects all of our lives too because it spills over into leadership.

 

People who know nothing about history are doomed to repeat it.

 

This is my own personal experience after 67 years and living all over the planet.

 

I think the question should be: how do we get Americans excited about history? 

 

 

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15 minutes ago, manayunkman said:

Kat,

 

The flea market in America is one of the few places where you get a cross section of its people.

 

Every age, race, religion, sexual preference, poor, rich, educated with degrees and people who never finished high school 

Obviously your flea market is WAY different than the flea market in the South.  There is definitely NOT a cross section of people at the flea market around here. 😁

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Some flea market are better than others.

 

I set up in PA at various markets for 30 years especially Silver Springs Black Angus Renningers in Adamstown.

 

Adamstown is one of the best weekly antiques flea market areas in the country as a matter of fact I don’t know of a better one.

 

Out in California the markets or swap meets have a lot more junk but they still are a great place to buy and sell.

 

Michigan has the worst flea markets, the state has been devastated economically but they are better than nothing.


Each market had people from all walks of life.

 

I would imagine southerners to be more learned in history since they have more pride in it?

 

Is that the difference you see?

 

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Quite the opposite. The South has a horrendous educational system. There is even one strip of schools here in SC called the Corridor of Shame.   Poorly funded. Poorly educated. And just plain old poor. The teachers do their best but they are leaving in droves because of zero support from the state.  It is not the fault of the teachers but the fault of horrible state funding for public education. 

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10 hours ago, cutiger83 said:

Not trying to be judgemental but lumping 99% of the  Americans in with the people who go to a flea market is leaving out basically 99% of the educated Americans.   You are dealing with a very small microcosm of educated people. 

 

As I said earlier, detailed US History is not taught until college and only if you take specific courses.  If you wanted a detailed WWII course then those would be very limited to find. Sounds like you took an overview and not  a detailed course.

 

..Kat

       The original OP stated that he was dealing with AP History Students meaning Advanced Placement. No reason other than not being taught for them not knowing what D-Day is. Teaching is a difficult profession, especially in these times of political indoctrination vs. actual history.

 

      That said, today's youth truly think Lincoln freed the slaves, Washington was nothing more than a slave owner (if they even know who he was), most cannot tell you when specific wars were fought or even where, and struggle with things like the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. This is a school/teacher problem. When your days are spent reassuring little Billy that he can be little Suzy if he wants to, or HE doesn't have to be HE or SHE, but X Y or Z, then we lose sight of things like the World they live in is a result of WWI... While many teachers may disagree with the prescribed state curriculum, it is up to them to lobby or force action through their districts and unions, until then we will continue to see poor standards in education and poor results in our students. 

      

      As a polite aside, I graduated from high school in the mid 80s and went to a public school in Michigan. My school has auto shops, a military history class, an fm radio station, 4 foreign languages, a coop restaurant and more. Now these things rarely exist unless there is a county career center where its all centralized. In doing this we lost jobs, opportunities for kids, basic life skills and so much more... I for one am happy to see charter schools and a return to basics that kids need and can use. I feel no sorrow for union run houses of indoctrination when they lose funding as they are not teaching, they are politicizing and indoctrinating.      Scott

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On 1/4/2020 at 1:34 PM, james127 said:

Before Christmas, I went with my church youth group on a visit to an assisted living facility in our town. I knew one of the residents there who is a veteran of WWII. A group of high school girls was standing in the hall so I pointed to his room and said, "Hey. That man in there is a WWII veteran. He was actually at Utah Beach on D-Day." Their response:

 

"What's D-Day?'

 

 

To be fair, referring to the Normandy landings only as "D-Day" opens the door to misunderstandings. We recognize "D-Day" to mean Normandy because we have married those two up ourselves - there is no one true D-Day. "D-Day" is a generic term for the first day of any invasion that is still in use today. Technically, there were dozens of D-Days during WWII, and a WWII Marine might consider the storming of Iwo Jima to be D-Day in their minds.

 

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I just joined the forum and have been looking at the discussions. This one caught my eye. I had a similar experience to James127. I wore a D-Day t shirt to church last year on June 6th and a young man asked me what that was. It was sad but cool that I could tell him about that D-Day was. I've been to Normandy once for D-Day and it's humbling to see how big of an event this is for Europeans and it's not even recognized here in the U.S. We should have a day of recognition for this privotal day in world history. Maybe it would help Americans recognize how great a nation we live in where people sacrificed their all for those being oppressed by evil to free them from tyranny.

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I don't personally think it's the crises many in this thread seem to believe. People have a tendency to judge an entire demographic based on limited interactions.

 

We have a national monument right here in the US. On the 75th Anniversary, they had over 100 WWII vets in attendance and the Vice President attended. My boss and I arranged for our section to attend as a PME. I can assure you from the rows of young Americans lining the monument to thank these vets for their service that many youths in this country are indeed aware of the events of June 6th.

 

https://www.dday.org/75th/

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Bluto in Animal House:

 

 

......

 

    Let's face it: we're all in our own Private Idahos. How much stuff are we oblivious to as we go about our hunting and gathering? Here at USMF we're focused on history so we're somewhat incredulous when someone doesn't know it.

  

     But someone might equally ask us what a Radian is, or why the twelfth root of two is significant, or what an Imperfect Predicate is, or who Chief Thunderthud was, or even who was the first Union officer killed in the war between the states. Generally we don't go around with that information in our heads. 

 

But we have ways to find out. I think the problem lies in being too lazy to do the findin'. 

    

(I do concede that we should know some basics though) 

.......

 

....

 

I hope the links work. But you know how to find them otherwise.  I hope. 

 

 

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8 hours ago, Wharfmaster said:

Children nowadays are not taught.  They are brainwashed.

 

 

 

W

I am quite sure this has been said by EVERY older generation about every younger generation. 

 

To quote something I saw recently "I don't care that much about wrinkles and grey hair. I'm more worried about keeping my world view flexible enough that when I'm older I don't condescendingly tell young people to play by the rules that worked in my day, with no concern for whether or not those rules still apply."

 

...Kat

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Just remember, kids are a product of their parents, which are a product of their parents, and on and on...nobody's generation is free of blame in the problems of this generation...and the kids of today will be just as much to blame in 20 years when those kids do something that confounds us

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  • 9 months later...
On 2/14/2023 at 12:53 PM, AirForceBrat said:

The other problem is that today’s generation thinks that anything that happened before they were born has no merit. They also believe that everything written on Wikipedia is they truth.

 

As opposed to older generations who think the Founding Fathers were divinely and uniquely inspired, with foresight and wisdom above and beyond all who have come since?

 

How is "everything on Wikipedia is truth" any different than "everything on cable news is truth"? Everything in Encyclopedia Britannica wasn't correct either.

 

Wikipedia often represents the depth to which the individual is interested in the subject. It's the difference between wanting to read the synopsis of a movie vs. actually watch it.

 

 

On 2/15/2023 at 11:26 AM, cutiger83 said:

As someone who has a mother who was a teacher and knows a LOT of teachers, I get very tired of the first blame is ALWAYS the schools/teachers.  History is taught throughout a child's education but US history details are not taught until high school and college. And that is only if you take a specific history class.

 

I went through Florida public schools in the 1990s. Florida history was taught in 4th grade, American history split between 7th and 8th, and high school featured one year of world history and one year of American history, plus any AP classes you took. Every university in Florida requires 2 semesters of either American history survey course or a comparable amount of non-American history. We never got more than a passing glance about anything post-WW2 because we never had time.

 

There is ALOT to cover and teachers are always rushing to cover everything. In the last two decades, there has been an increased emphasis on standardized testing.

 

People clueless about and/or disinterested in history is not a new problem. It existed before Wikipedia and TikTok and whatever you want to point at about "kids these days."

 

 

On 2/15/2023 at 10:29 PM, ScottG said:

       The original OP stated that he was dealing with AP History Students meaning Advanced Placement. No reason other than not being taught for them not knowing what D-Day is. Teaching is a difficult profession, especially in these times of political indoctrination vs. actual history.

 

      That said, today's youth truly think Lincoln freed the slaves, Washington was nothing more than a slave owner (if they even know who he was), most cannot tell you when specific wars were fought or even where, and struggle with things like the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. This is a school/teacher problem. When your days are spent reassuring little Billy that he can be little Suzy if he wants to, or HE doesn't have to be HE or SHE, but X Y or Z, then we lose sight of things like the World they live in is a result of WWI... While many teachers may disagree with the prescribed state curriculum, it is up to them to lobby or force action through their districts and unions, until then we will continue to see poor standards in education and poor results in our students.

 

How many actual teachers do you talk to?

 

The teachers I talk to, who have taught in the last two decades, cite three major problems:

 

1. They work long hours for lousy pay with class sizes that are too big.

 

2. They are put under a lot of pressure about standardized test scores.

 

3. Parents, parents, parents. Yes, there are distractions - broken homes and poverty. Too many parents are unable or unwilling to help their children with homework and reading, or to otherwise be involved in their children's education. One teacher, who taught local public schools from the 1980s to the 2010s, I asked point blank what surprised them the most about teaching. Their answer: they expected to be an educator, but had to spend a lot of time being a parental figure.

 

The problems with public schools have little or nothing to do with some stupid fragging culture war cable news has been banging the drum about for the last 20-30 years.

 

On 2/22/2023 at 10:54 AM, Wharfmaster said:

Children nowadays are not taught.  They are brainwashed.

 

Children were always being brainwashed in school. Nowadays we just have more people disagreeing about what they're being brainwashed. American Exceptionalism and mandatory daily Pledge of Allegiance are just forms of indoctrination you happen to agree with.

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> Being a parent for our last high school senior, news from the front is that the kids are pretty much like we were - some care a lot about history and tradition, some don't, most are caring about sports, the opposite sex (very few are confused about that), where they're going to attend and how to pay for college for which purpose, excited to get on with their lives away from home and the drudgery of public school routine, what they're wearing, how to endure mandatory DEI, CRT, ESG training, compassion for the needy and getting their first driver's license - all in all we're very encouraged that they seem quite able to separate common sense from the nonsense as well as or better than we did. Our son's teachers have been singularly just fine to fantastic, K-12, despite the State's meandering social justice concoctions. As for brainwashing, we're still trying to get him to close doors behind himself.

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