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<p>In general I agree with you, rge. But for my generation – i.e., your parents, or a little bit older, people you are going to have to deal with for another 20 years or so – the Kennedy assassination has something of the same resonance as 9/11. When one of your kids’ friends says, “Why visit the World Trade Center site? You don’t care that much about trade,” it will be OK if you roll your eyes and feel that the friend is a little under-educated about things you consider important. And . . . it would be great to know why Kennedy was assassinated, and exactly what the ramifications have been, but it’s a lot easier to remember the Texas Book Depository.</p>
<p>I have a slightly different reaction to your comments about 1956 (about which I personally remember very little, since I was only there for four months, and spent much of that learning to focus my eyes and to distinguish my parents from furniture). No one thinks it’s important to be able to match a President to a year instantly, but the post-WWII period, extending into the '50s, is when the world you live in was pretty much formed (the late 60s being its adolescence, the period around 1989 its first midlife crisis, etc.). If you know anything about it, and what was going on in the world then, it’s easy-peazy to know that Eisenhower was the U.S. President then. If someone can’t even identify Eisenhower as the President in the mid-50s, it’s pretty likely that he or she knows practically nothing about that era. And that’s upsetting.</p>
<p>It’s not as bad as saying, “Who cares who was President during the Civil War?” But still pretty bad.</p>