vskid wrote:A kid in my world civ class last year didn't know that we (the US) fought against the Nazis in World War II. I knew he wasn't the smartest (he takes honors classes and that, though), but this just embedded in my mind that he must have had his head repeatedly slammed against the floor as a baby. Anyone that has ever played a shooter has a 50% chance of knowing that the US fought the Nazis, since about 50% of the shooters ever made are about WWII.
That's not surprising. A poll from not long ago showed that something like sixty percent of all Americans think we were on the side of the Germans in World War II. Whether or not those Americans associate the Germans in World War II with Nazis, however, I can't say.
benol wrote:We just happen to have more history than the rest of the world, and we are one of the few countries that earned their freedom, instead of just receiving it.
That's a little much. The only country that I can really say didn't "earn" its freedom so much as it did come into its own on the subject is England, and what pages in history books they lack due to an absence of violent large-scale internal conflicts they make up for in imperialism and being revolted against. (Note: Were you being sarcastic? Your other comments seem to make me think you were, yet this comment itself doesn't reek of the sweet, savory, Cajun-style sarcasm I've come to be so familiar with on the internets.) (
Edit: Based on a similar commentary in another thread, I would guess not. I suppose Canada didn't really have to fight for much. But otherwise, the idea that only a few countries have fought for their way of life is totally askew.)
bicostp wrote:We hardly learn about the history of our own country, or at least the 20'th century. Every year we start at the pilgrims, then we hit the revolutionary war, then a couple chapters later we hit the Civil War, then BOOM summer vacation. <img src="
http://www.skytroniks.com/images/databa ... es/wtf.gif"> Every. Stinkin'. Year. Kids of the future will remember the colonies, but the Korean war, the Watergate scandal, the first gulf war, Vietnam, and the beginnings of the trade embargo with Cuba will be long forgotten. (Well maybe except Cuba... if you watch old "I Love Lucy" episodes, they sometimes talk about a Cuban vacation.)
Fun fact: I learned more about history from The History Channel than I did from history class.
Why would they teach you about things from the twentieth century, let alone the latter half of it? That would be directly relevant to your life, and would potentially allow you to notice that the only people that our electoral system will
allow you to vote for are representative of the interests of whatever multi-billion dollar companies they've worked for in the past (this rant is technically apolitical (assuming you don't use the technical definition of "apolitical")!).
I have far too many examples of classroom ignorance to really cite any specific one that stands out amongst the others (this is largely a product of a disgustingly congested school system in New York City), sans a girl I took a number of classes once asking me if "that
Titanic thing like from the movie was real" (which is like an existential freaking stress test, when you consider that it's a movie about a fictional story that takes place during a non-fictional event, but that's not what was confusing her), but I
can comment on a couple of things that I think would fall under a catagory better described as "exercising personal opinions over the students on the part of the teacher" or "poor ethics" or, more abstractly, "ignorance in the classroom". For example, I had one teacher who gave a current events assignment that pertained to an inmate on death row being executed, and he basically informed the class that he had no respect for anyone who opposed the death penalty and, as such, would fail them. Half the class failed (I presume ten to twenty percent of the class was failed due to not turning in their assignments). Another classic incident was a teacher I had in third grade who, upon seeing me use the "rabbit ears" technique to tie my shoes as opposed to the "loop, swoop, and pull" technique, announced to the class that I tied my shoes "like a three year old". Uninteresting side note, I use both techniques these days, picking one based on how out of whack the length of either end of my laces are.
Finally, the incident that sticks out to me the most is my ninth grade biology class. We had a class filled with clowns, and as such, they liked to sit in the back and flick little paper balls at people. I, being the nearest person to the them, got the most paper balls flung at me, and my crack biology teacher deemed that I must be the one flinging the little paper balls all over the room, since they were all around me.
You know, because I must've been flicking them at myself. The idiocy of that was compounded by the fact that she was a teacher with a limited grasp of English, teaching a subject filled with eight syllable words to a class that could already give barely a damn at all.
However, I do have one example that is most certainly "classroom ignorance". The fact that teachers
still assign mandatory homework and will fail you if you don't turn it in (even if you display exemplary classroom participation and receive high test marks), despite study after study and numerous "experimental" education techniques that have proven the standard mandatory homework grading procedures to be, if anything, counter-productive.
Sir Games-A-Lot wrote:On a slightly different note, my teacher for Honors Computer Applications (AKA Micro$oft Offi¢e For Idiots) basically hates the curriculum so we get to do it how ever we want so long as we submit progress reports with screen captures and completed projects every so often. The irony here? Since nobody ever really cares or notices what I'm doing, all my progress reports are composed using AbiWord:P
:: snicker ::
Someone can't spell today. (Sorry, was saying to my mate you were our resident grammar Nazi and he found that gem 
<3 anon