WD.... I read your post AFTER sending my latest rant. sorry.
----- Original Message ---- From: Mr. WD <mister.wd at gmail.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Friday, 24 August, 2007 10:05:00 AM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Feeling Old.... Yeah!
On 8/24/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Aug 24, 2007, at 8:14 AM, Ismail Lagardien wrote:
>
> > Teaching a Class on Africa's International Relations a year ago
> > (Aug- Dec) I felt like an ancient freak. Not a single undergraduate
> > knew, beyond "a" name (one Nelson Mandela), what apartheid was. I
> > didn't know whether to laugh, or cry. But then, some of them
> > couldn't discuss McCarthyism, the Watts Riots, Kent State, Tet...
> > They had never heard of the Sandinistas/Contras... To his credit,
> > one student liked The Clash!!! (and thought he knew about the
> > Sandinistas)
>
> It's odd how that Beloit list, and some of the punditry it inspired,
> seems to assume that you have to have had personal experience of a
> historical event to know anything about it.
>
> Doug
While it's stupid to assume that one must live through something to know about it, I think it's a mistake (and I am not accusing you of making it) to draw gloomy conclusions about the character of a generation based on its ignorance of relatively recent historical events.
I graduated from an affluent public high school in 1998 -- and apartheid was associated with Nelson Mandela and that was about the limit of instruction on that. None of my high school teachers ever discussed McCarthyism (except maybe in passing reference when we studied The Crucible), or the Watts Riots -- certainly no one ever mentioned Tet or the Sandinistas/Contras. I recall discussing Kent State during the final week of class for U.S. History, although it was an "enrichment" day and largely used as an excuse for my teacher to play Neil Young and Dylan songs (there was no test, so you didn't have to pay attention).
As cheesy as it sounds, before college, I think I learned most of what I learned about recent history and political theory by reading the books Rage Against the Machine put in their liner notes for "Evil Empire" (http://www.ratm.com/new2/action/readinglist.html).
Frankly, if I were a teacher in a public high school in a community where 2/3 of the parents still love Ronald Reagan, I'd be pretty nervous about teaching shit like Tet and the Iran Contra scandal too. The point being, it's not the kids' fault -- it's not really their teachers' fault either -- it's the right-wing politicization of instruction.
-WD __________________________ thevanitywebsite.blogspot.com ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
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