<p>rg, to be considered an educated person you will have a basic knowledge of civics, which includes presidents and history. That is just a fact.</p>
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<p>No, that’s an opinion. That or the definition of an “educated person” is changing.</p>
<p>To someone who values historic preservation, a historically illiterate generation will not think twice about bulldozing historic homes, paving over battlefields, or rerouting the freeway to change the look of Dealey Plaza.</p>
<p>“I don’t think this is just the younger generation, but a longstanding problem in US society.”</p>
<p>Agreed. Alexis de Tocqueville had our number back in the 1830s – we had a strong anti-intellectual streak back then, too.</p>
<p>This columnist interviewed one under-informed would-be Middle East correspondent and concluded that the generation is full of dunces. After reading this one column, I guess my own generation of journalists is full of pompous blowhards.</p>
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<p>That made me lol.</p>
<p>look, from my perspective this is a no-brainer: until the standard american curriculum changes to be much more inclusive of the contributions of all of its citizens, kids are gonna tune out. no, it’s not important to know the silly little standardized test factoids. what’s important is TRUTH in education. until we stop dumbing down (sugarcoating) the story about the so-called founding of this nation, get real about slavery and the slaughter of the first americans, and have serious, in-depth discussions about all sorts of other topics, then… we get what we ‘pay’ for. it truly is that simple. kids sense that they aren’t being told the whole story, and they get resentful. why pay attention when you feel as though your teacher is telling you a bunch of lies???</p>
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<p>Perhaps they should tell the United States Military Academy how useless its core requirements in foreign language, philosophy, ethics, English, literature, history, and political science are.</p>
<p>I just don’t see how anyone can extrapolate one incident involving one person to an entire generation. I also don’t take the inability of an individual to give a correct answer to a factual tidbit in the context of a job interview as being actual proof that the individual in question didn’t “know” the answer. Job interviews are stressful situations - the type of situation that can make it difficult for many people to retrieve that sort of information. (What is known among youngsters as a “brain fart” and among the over-50 crowd as a “senior moment”). I mean, heck, there are times when I can’t remember the names of my own kids, and no, it doesn’t mean that I really believed that my daughter and the family dog shared the same name.</p>
<p>My son was out of school for 3 years between his sophomore and junior year of college, and because he transferred, as a 23 year old junior he ended up taking a required introductory American History course with 18 year old freshmen. At the time he already noticed a generational shift, which became apparent in discussions over the fall of the Soviet Union. My son was old enough to remember Gorbachev & the fall of the Berlin Wall, as well as the ultimate fall of the USSR – his classmates, born 5 years later, had been infants and toddlers during those events and had no specific memories. There was a qualitative difference in <em>knowing</em> something because you lived through it, and <em>knowing</em> something that had been taught. </p>
<p>I think its is very hard to say how far you have to drill down in terms of details (dates, place names, etc) before we are getting to the difference between what students ought to know from their learning as opposed to what older people know from experience.</p>
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<p>RGE- exactly, smart people designed the internet, and more smart people designed wireless technology, and even more smart people designed small little hand held devices that we can carry around and use to look up as much useless info if we find a need to. We do not have to remember the details. </p>
<p>I do believe that we need to understand history and how it developed our country. </p>
<p>But I seriously doubt that anyone’s life has hinged on whether or not they could name the president from 1956 without the use of the internet. </p>
<p>I would much rather this generation continue the amazing, creative, and crazy ideas that have developed over the past years.</p>
<p>The 58th president?? I don’t expect kids to time travel to the future.</p>
<p>LOL- that was a funny typo- that is what I get for not proofreading and combining two thoughts. </p>
<p>But MAYBE this generation WILL figure out how to time travel! LOL</p>
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<p>It is not surprising that personal anecdotes are likely much more influential to most people than statistical probabilities. If you know someone for whom rare event X occurred, then you may be more likely to actively seek or avoid X (depending on whether X is good or bad) even though the probability of event X for you is extremely low.</p>
<p>No, you don’t need to know much of anything about history to get a good job or live a fulfilling life. But if you want to consider yourself an educated person, you certainly do.</p>
<p>But then again, to consider yourself an educated person, you should also be able to explain the principles of photosynthesis, explain how GNP and GDP are calculated, speak at least one language in addition to your native tongue, calculate a basic derivative of a function, write a simple compute program, explain the principles of sonata form, analyze a Shakespeare play, list the guarantees of the Bill of Rights, calculate the probability of winning the lottery … etc.</p>
<p>Even though I think a person interested in history and politics should be able to figure out who the President was in 1956, I still think the article is stupid and offensive. This guy is way too young to be such a curmudgeon. And I’ve gotta say, I get tired of people gushing over the military so much when they themselves didn’t choose to serve. Stephens was only 27 in 2001, after all. Why didn’t he enlist? I guess he was too busy being a young global leader.</p>