Archive through April 16, 2002

The ClubHouse: Archives: A wise man once said.....: Archive through April 16, 2002

Faerygdds

Sunday, April 14, 2002 - 12:17 pm Click here to edit this post
Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

And yet over the past few days I have discovered that Americans on a whole do NOT know history. My husband is a techie. The other day they had something really rare that happened.. the phones died... and there were 200 techies with nothing to do until Ma Bell fixed the problem. Most techs went and surfed the web for wav files, etc. My husband was looking at a site that had historical wav files and was playing one of Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis when another tech yelled out, "Oh my God, Is that happenening NOW???" My husband said, no and told them what it was and they just stared back at him blank faced and asked, "the Cuban WHAT?"

He explained of course and was most shocked by the fact that this individual (age 24) had NO CLUE who the "Soviets" were.

OK... that was shocking enough, but then he's listening to Dr. King's "Mountaintop" speech when two men came up behind him and asked who that was. My husband was in shock and began to play for these two young men (19 and 22) the "I have a Dream" speech. Halfway through the speech the men realized, "Hey! He's talking about US!" (Yes, they are black) It's amazing to me that we can follow the rhetoric passed to us in hate forever and, yet, how quickly the compassionate and understanding leaders of yesteryear are forgotten and dismissed.

I am just in shock!!!!! How can we as a society have let the past slip through our fingers? Maybe we forgot the most important lesson from history after all... that those who do not learn it are doomed to repeat it.

Moondance

Sunday, April 14, 2002 - 12:27 pm Click here to edit this post
I agree Faery...

Blows my mind especially when people are complaining about certain events and have NO idea what they are really complaining about.

It bugs me when people are too lazy to really investigate something to be better informed and only rely on the media or from a 'friend' instead of forming their own opinions on facts they have gathered.

Read people READ!.

Twiggyish

Sunday, April 14, 2002 - 01:00 pm Click here to edit this post
Exactly!

By the way, we lived in southeast Florida during the missle crisis. I was a young child then,but my family remembers the planes flying overhead towards Cuba (The skies were covered). The Cuban missles were aimed towards the US coast. Those of us in Florida would have surely been impacted.

Cablejockey

Sunday, April 14, 2002 - 01:26 pm Click here to edit this post
I was just reading a book detailing events during the Cuban Missle Crisis--among other events during Kennedy years. It's called Mrs. Kennedy. Anyway I was shocked by some of the things I read, stuff I never saw in any book or tv documentary. Like how certain politicians and their staff were given badges so they could getinto underground bunkers if the Russians decided to strike. The Kennedys were not sure they would have time to make it and deciced to stay together at the White House. The mind set of military advisors back then was unbelivable. Its always sad how history is looked down on by most young people as old moldy stuff with no relevance to today or to them.

Faerygdds

Sunday, April 14, 2002 - 05:00 pm Click here to edit this post
CJ,

I know... I think the pervasive attititude is/was "It's not my problem and it didn't happen in our times and it won't happen again"

Unfortunately, it's this kind of thinking that ALLOWS it to happen again! I hear such disturbing things about how much we've forgotten. The 25 yr old my Mother works with didn't know what a "kamakazi" pilot was... or that Pearl Harbor ACTUALLY happened! How soon we forget.

I have the HBO series "From the Earth to the Moon". (Which, for those interested it can be rented from netflix) It chronicles the Apollo space program from Kennedy's challenge until the end. There is one episode called "1968". It was 3 years before I was even born, but I still sob through the episode. Especially when they play part of Ted Kennedy's Eulogy for his brother Robert:

My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death what he was in life, but to be remembered simply as a good and decent man who saw a wrong and tried to right it... who saw suffering and tried to heal it... who saw war, and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him and take him to his rest today pray that what he was to us, what he wished for others, will someday come to pass for all the world. As he said many times in many parts of this nation, "some men see things as they are and say, 'Why?' I dream things that never were and say, 'Why Not?'"


They also have a portion of King's famous "Mountaintop" speech. I hear these great speeches of our times from the good and decent men of our times. The pacifists that saw that war was another form of hate. People who sought to stop the hate in their tracks and instead profliferate the world with love, compassion, and understanding. For their efforts they gave their lives... literally... and now... only 34 years later... their words are lost, the meaning obscured through time.

I cry during that episode not for the words spoken, but for the fact that now I see the world again on the brink of war and I understand all too well that if war comes to pass, they will have died in vain. And when I think that, my heart cries out in pain...

Littlebreeze

Monday, April 15, 2002 - 08:41 am Click here to edit this post
Not only am I appalled at the lack of history knowledge in so many today but at their general lack of schooled knowledge.

I'm the lucky duck chosen to train new employees at my workplace. I'm constantly amazed by the fact that many can't spell to save their lives. Not only is their spelling absolutely atrocious but their grammar is horrendous. When it comes to reading or conversing, they have no inkling as to the definition of words which they should've been familiar with by the time they left junior high school. They have little or no math ability. Here's the saddest part. I'm talking about college graduates here.

I constantly wonder how these people earned college diplomas. Who passed them along from grade to grade, for years, when they were so severely lacking not only in the knowledge of history but in the necessary basics of reading, writing and arithmetic?

Faerygdds

Monday, April 15, 2002 - 09:37 am Click here to edit this post
Maybe I should put into context how I got so upset in the first place. Where my husband works, there is one common smoking area. There is a guy (I can't bring myself to call him a gentleman) who is VERY vocal politically. He litteraly spews the party line. You know the type, he regurgitates the headlines and tried to make it look like he knows what is going on.

A few weeks ago the headlines on Sunday were all about bush and the nukes. My husband who had been vocal, but certainly not controversial asked him what he thought about the whole nuke thing. His response was, "I LOVE IT! I think we should just nuke the whole area and let Allah sort them out!" My husband is a LOT like me... in otherwords... he was outraged. He began saying things at work like, "Be careful or this country is headed towards the past." He would also joke about things like, "I swaer if I ever hear Congress ask somone, 'Have you now or have you ever been a memeber of the Taliban?' I'm moving to Canada!"

He kept getting the "it'll never happen response". Most people there think he is some radical who is just making up all this stuff rather than an informed citizen who is simply drawing parallels through time. Well, when the phone outage happened I realized why they thought he was so off his rocker. They really didn't know history AT ALL... and when you don't know history is can repeat itself and usually will.

I guess I came here to vent because you all always make me feel pretty darn good and it's nice to be able to discuss something with able minded adults who actually have a little bit of knowledge and a thirst for it. In otherwords, I needed to commiserate! lol

Frankly though, I think this is a national tragedy! How can we expect to have decent leaders of the future if they do not know the lessons of the past?

JUST PLAIN SCARY!

Urgrace

Monday, April 15, 2002 - 10:25 am Click here to edit this post
Faery, you are absolutely right. Littlebreeze, those 'poor illiterate college grads' graduated with little things like spell check on their computers, calculators to tell them to give back $4.84 change from the ten dollar bill, cliff notes so they wouldn't have to read or understand the great novels, and degrees to get them a better paying job than the guy who educated himself. The young people today not only cannot spell, or make change, but don't know anything about geography as well as history. It blows my mind when someone cannot read a map or has never visited historical sites. (Truthfully though, I am a little baffled at times when a foreign country changes it's name and splits and changes again. It is beginning to be hard to keep up with.)

People don't remember anything that is not important to them - at the moment! The 9-11 attack on our soil really shook a lot of people who thought something like that would never happen. Why did they wait for a tragedy to happen to go to the store to buy an American flag? There were a lot of citizens who didn't even know the proper way to hang a flag!

Labmouse

Monday, April 15, 2002 - 10:32 am Click here to edit this post
The liberal arts curriculum is still alive and well in U.S. universities. It would be virtually impossible to get a degree in history without a passing familiarity of World War II, Kamikazes, John F. Kennedy, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.

One could get one heck of an education just watching the History Channel or PBS. They have done in depth stories on every topic you have mentioned.

You have chosen a select group of people (techies) and then judged the whole U.S. educational system on their interests and biases.

I have acquaintances who don't know how to turn on a computer, but could talk for hours on any topic you mentioned. The "techies" would probably think my friends are dense.

On the other hand my friends wouldn't spend down time at work surfing the Internet looking for Wav files.

Littlebreeze

Monday, April 15, 2002 - 12:25 pm Click here to edit this post
You're absolutely correct, Labmouse, when you speak of lumping people into one group or another. The people I spoke of are not just techies. They've come from a variety of college backgrounds and majors. The ones who've shocked me more than any other are those who had teaching degrees in their hands. They could not spell, could not write with any sense of grammar and found basic math a challenge, the basics, yet they possess a degree to teach our children. That's frightening.

Labmouse

Monday, April 15, 2002 - 12:59 pm Click here to edit this post
I am sorry Littlebreeze...I was referring to Faerygdd's posts. I guess I should have made that clear. She seemed upset at the general lack of knowledge at her husband's workplace (employing 200 techies).

To clarify things, I just do not believe that everyone in the U.S. is lacking in general knowledge. If a person has curiosity and a desire to learn, they will do so.

You mentioned in your post that you are shocked by those who have teaching degrees and cannot spell, write, or do basic math. I had a college roommate who was illiterate (no exaggeration). He had been in a serious motorcycle accident that affected his cognitive skills. He received a teaching degree and with it a job teaching grammar school. I was horrified.

Faerygdds

Monday, April 15, 2002 - 01:13 pm Click here to edit this post
Actually Lab.. I thought it was just the techies until I spoke with my mother and she relayed to me info from the girl she works with (a medical assistant) and from college students.

And by the way, have you looked at the tech industry lately??? It's actaully a middle America type of job. Of the people in the conversation only one (my husband) was a career techie. The others are college students in a variety of degree systems, a minister, ex customer support ppl, and many other "displaced" employees from companies that had to downsize after 9-11.

I know to YOU it may sound like it's "just techies", but it's actually a cross section of middle America.

If it was just techies it would be one thing, but there have been many times that I have been shocked at the general lack of historical knowledge. *I* have been to college and frankly, I didn't learn a thing about history. The point is that unless you are explicitly studying to get a degree in history, then it is thought of (widely) as "another extranneous core curriculum class". My grievance is that as Americans... shouldn't we know the history of this country? Shouldn't we understand how we got into and better yet avoided war in the past in order to learn from it?

I'm not saying it's everyone... I'm just saying that perhaps it shouldn't be anyone...

Faerygdds

Monday, April 15, 2002 - 01:15 pm Click here to edit this post
Oh and Yes.. the History channel and PBS have some really wonderful shows!

Littlebreeze

Monday, April 15, 2002 - 02:11 pm Click here to edit this post
No problem, Labmouse. The story of your roommate getting a teaching degree is very interesting and it's sad in two respects. It's very sad that this man was involved in a motorcycle accident and suffered such tragic side effects and it's just as sad that any educational institution would give an illiterate person a teaching degree or, for that matter, any degree. Yours is not the first story I've heard where illiterates have received teaching degrees. I can tell you that the people I've seen and dealt with were only a hair's breadth from illiteracy yet one college or another somehow saw fit to hand them their degrees.

I also agree with your other points, Labmouse. Far from the majority of people in this country lack the knowledge referred to in this thread. What I'm about to say does not apply to those who don't attend school at all, or dropped out at an early age, or have some manner of learning disability. The rest, who graduate from college so sadly absent of these most common knowledges, are those who are lazy and uninterested in learning yet they've been allowed to slide through the education system. That's a disgrace and an immense disservice to the student. Isn't a college degree something to be worked for, earned, merited? Obviously, that's not always the case.

Xxlt

Monday, April 15, 2002 - 02:34 pm Click here to edit this post
has anyone noticed that the 'crawl' at the bottom of cnn/fox/msnbc news programs have misspellings on them? and the abbreviations are pretty funny too....no punctuation!!!!!!! YIKES........

the saddest part is the dumbing down of america
'Xtreme','Nu', b spears' song titles, 2 (too),
4 (for), rap song titles.......for a long time i was a bit afraid of SOME of the new gen Xers coming out with their infinite knowledges of system applications, network apps......but now (especially seeing their rape and pillage of the
dot coms)i see that i have nothing to fear.....
they latest group of kids fresh out of tech school barely last a year at the job. they take the best paying job and wait until something else comes up...working your way up the ladder isn't an aspiration, you start at the top and fall all the way down these days......

intelligence is knowing every answer on Jeopardy!, being smart is knowing to get out of the street when a car starts toward you.

Weinermr

Monday, April 15, 2002 - 04:32 pm Click here to edit this post
<being smart is knowing to get out of the street when a car starts toward you>

Xxlt, I don't know if it's intelligence, or it's just that many people are too arrogant to move out of the way.

Littlebreeze

Monday, April 15, 2002 - 06:06 pm Click here to edit this post
I see the difference between knowing all the answers on Jeopardy and knowing enough to get out of the way of a moving vehicle as the difference between acquired knowledge and common sense.

Your points are well taken, Xxit. I've always disliked the phrase "dumbing down of America". Its premise makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up but I tend to agree that it's slowly becoming true.

You mentioned the misspellings in the crawls used by the news stations. Add newspapers to the list of places where misspellings and poor grammar are common these days.

Also add news anchors and copywriters. I sometimes cringe when listening to the news, especially our local news. For me, that's Boston. Wouldn't you expect a high caliber of education to be a requirement before a person is plunked down at a copywriter's desk or an anchor desk at a major network affiliate such as Boston? You'd think that would be a requirement at any news station. I'm sure these people are highly educated but the basics of English grammar weren't learned along the way. When I listen to news anchors and hear blatant, elementary level mistakes, I think to myself, "Now there's a poor copywriter and a poor anchor." Does the anchor not read the copy before going on air or does the anchor indeed read the copy beforehand but, like the writer, simply doesn't know these are mistakes?

Here's an interesting tidbit that just popped into my mind. It's the other side of the coin. I've read several times, in several places, that Peter Jennings went no further than high school. He has no college education. If that's true, then he's a shining example of what Labmouse said earlier, that a person who has curiosity and a desire to learn will do so. From the most basic of issues to the most complicated of issues, with the man on the street or with heads of state, Peter Jennings is nearly flawlessly articulate as he converses with knowledge, intelligence and ease.

Even without the benefit of an extended education, a person with a thirst for knowledge will feel the need to continually quench that thirst and they'll do it for a lifetime. Those people sit on one hand. On the other hand sit the perfectly healthy minded who did have the benefit of extended education but had no drive and no interest in learning, the illiterate and the close to illiterate college graduates who received a free pass through the system.

Faerygdds

Monday, April 15, 2002 - 06:13 pm Click here to edit this post
Weinermr.. you crack me up!

Xxlt: Are you talking about the closed captioning? I often see boo boos in there, but then agaiin I think most CC is done by free lance court reporters, not the actual news agency.

What about that trend that turns all the "S"s in a a word to "Z"s... or they turn "C"s into "K"s
It's leterally a whole new language and (sounding as redneck as I can get)

I DUN GET IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

NO, thank God I don't think that the majority of America is illiterate. But it is a little disturbing to find out that poeple don't know what some of the simplest terms of history as McCarthyism or what the Berlin wall was.

My Mom and I were talking on the phone about this and she said to me, "Do you watch Leno?" I said very flatly, "Uh No" Apparently he does this thing where he goes to colleges and shows them a picture or asks them a question. Mom said she is never more amazed than by some of the people he manages to find. Now I realize he polls 50 people until he finds one that is just so ... well.... ummm.... misinformed (Yeah that's a good word), but it's still disturbing when a 4th year Law Student doesn't know what the Berlin Wall is, where it was, or even where Berlin was. He gave the hint that it came down and she guessed that it must have decayed and crumbled. Well, to her credit, I guess in a methaphorical way she was right? Oh boy... lol


Maybe kids (in general) aren't spending enough time with their own "living history"? I remember I used to talk to my Grandfather about the events of his lifetime and mine. Then later I talked to my parents and looked stuff up myself. Maybe in this mixed up "cyber" world we have designed our own demise by "pluggin in" to the CPU and not "plugging in" to the people in our lives and our past...

hmmmm... what do you all think?

Faerygdds

Monday, April 15, 2002 - 06:16 pm Click here to edit this post
Excellent point Little!

Xxlt

Tuesday, April 16, 2002 - 09:42 am Click here to edit this post
sorry,
i meant the 'crawls' at the bottom of the screen.
example:

Isreal PM says pullout sched for 1 week.


the close captioning errors i can handle because of the machine that they use! that's a tough job.
as far as the grammatical errors in the news media go-we forgot to mention the editors that 'filter' out the garbage!

My dad always gave us books as kids......we would look for something in an encyclopedia and before we found what we were looking for we would 'see'
at least 10 other things that were of interest to us. Another example is being taught to use a
dictionary. Sounds pretty dumb, but it's a simple
trick that has helped me all my life. In my job we have a reference book that SHOULD be used. I can't say how many times I have had to correct errors just because people cannot use a simple reference book.

As far as living history goes, I go to see mom every once in a while and we have a "Current Events" hour, we talk about everything, anything!
the most satisying comment came from my nephew who happened to be spending a few nights w/her.

He asked if we still had "current events"...He told her that he learned alot from our conversations and missed being there for them.

turn off the t.v. set (not during the NHL playoffs!!!) and have a few sessions...it's amazing how much info you can swap. The best part is the attention you will get from the youngsters
from little things like the STOP DROP AND COVER drills, gas prices at 25 cents a gallon, 45 records, full service gas stations, milk in a bottle, drive in movies, news reels........

you'll surprise yourself at how much you'll remember and the satisfaction of passing on that bit of 'living history' that we all lived thru!

Xxlt

Tuesday, April 16, 2002 - 09:44 am Click here to edit this post
sorry,
i used 'thru' that time!

i am guilty of the 'thru', 'tho' word butchering.
i like to believe that i do use them in the proper grammatical sense....lol

Faerygdds

Tuesday, April 16, 2002 - 11:24 am Click here to edit this post
That's OK!!!

I know how to use correct grammar, but often slough it off and use ellipses. That is so great that your family does that! I remember the long talks I used to have with my Dad about the 60's when I was a teenager. They were some of the most amazing conversations.

JFK... Kent State... how my Dad was almost drafted (he's half deaf)... how he was supposed to be on bus that went to Mississippi the weekend those boys went missing... How he was supposed to be crossing the quad the morning Whitman went nuts in the UT Bell tower (thank God his prof had the flu)...

Amazing stories! My Grandfather made planes for WWII and told me all about that era... Looking back to me I thought they were amazing tales, never did I think they would impact me later in life.

I really love that this kind of interaction is going on today! Most kids I know (including my niece and nephews) are only interested in Pokemon,Barbie, and (gag) Brittany Spears! I hope my Dad shares his stories with them... I know I sure enjoyed them!

Oh and sidenote... The TAAS test was given yesterday.... it's a "basic assesment test"... And when I say Basic, I mean BASIC! I remember the TAAS, they instituted it the year I was IN 10th grade. It covers reading to about a 3rd or 4th grade level, math through fractions, and writing a basic paragraph in which they are looking for getting the point across rather than grammar. OK... now that I gave you all that... the results? 75% in Dallas passed... now to me that says that 1/4th of our students are being failed, but the sad fact is that this is an IMPROVEMENT to last year! <sigh>

Xxlt

Tuesday, April 16, 2002 - 03:50 pm Click here to edit this post
thinking about the original strand of this thread,
about the 'non-believers' we have come in contact with. It reminded me of trying to tell a woman, 5 years younger than me, about the old four track tape decks (before the 8 track decks!!)...
the funniest AND saddest thing was to have that
person look at you like you were lying and trying to pull a fast one on them.....thank god for garages!!! i brought a four track cassette in the next day and she STILL was skeptical. i
often have wondered why people have such
skepticism when it comes to believing in the past.
i can't count the times people have looked at me like i am crazy.....try telling someone that
you needed to have ice delivered to your home to keep your food cold!!!!

about the 'face recognition' tests that t.v. shows do.....i remember a while back the survey they did on kids....the winner was someone like ronald mcdonald (i know i'm wrong, but it was someone stupid like that).....kids do not know the president but they sure know a fast food clown..

75% of the kids failed that test! lol, that's a
.750 batting average..(good enough for a jillion dollar baseball contract)....you figure if 500,000
took the test that's ONLY 125,000 that failed.....

only 125,000!!!..........someone in the school district will come out with another "BAT" and lower the bar because of some lawsuit filed by a parent whose kid will not get a sports scholarship
for failing the darn thing!

Faerygdds

Tuesday, April 16, 2002 - 05:43 pm Click here to edit this post
I know... I was sitting there watching the mews and they were proclaiming how GOOD 75% was and I kept thinking...

1 in 4 students in Dallas lack the basic skills required... and THEY are happy???????!

Now I know that SOME kids will always fail, but 1/4th??? Shouldn't we be shooting for like... oh.... 95% passing or something??? I mean it IS a BASIC skills test!!! Hello...........

But I guess 3 out of 4 "ain't so bad" to the City Council huh?

UGH.. ok.. gotta go watch for tornadoes... lol

And by the way..... I never knew they made a 4 track! Neat! I had an 8 track. I kept one (The Muppet Movie).

Spygirl

Tuesday, April 16, 2002 - 06:05 pm Click here to edit this post
Just remember that those standardized tests are normed to a particular population of kids -- not necessarily representative of the population of kids in Dallas. Standardized testing has some serious flaws in my opinion and should not be used to judge all children as not all children have had the same opportunities to learn.