<p>Yesterday’s WSJ had letters from people complaining about various aspects of education. It’s all the fault of those progressives, who don’t believe in the good old fashioned triad of rote memorization, drill, and negative feedback! School is too expensive because colleges make students take useless requirements like foreign language, philosphy, and fine arts! Etc, etc, etc. Compare it with the Stephens op-ed and it’s actually hilarious for the internal contradictions. :)</p>
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<p>For this particular case–someone interested in writing about Middle East politics–I’d say that it is highly useful to know who the main political players were at the time of a major event in the history of the region. And if someone with those kinds of goals can’t figure out who the next president was (count forward to the next election, think for just a moment about who might have been elected in 1960), that’s pretty appalling in my book.</p>