General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNicholle (love her) is talking about the "cold war." I would bet people under 40 have no idea what that was even all
about, unless taught by great teachers and folks like us who know exactly what the threats were and the stakes were high. Like now.
eShirl
(18,503 posts)Cold War kid here, too, btw. You're right.
Evolve Dammit
(16,763 posts)hlthe2b
(102,360 posts)Revolutionary War (of course)), US-Mexico War, Korean War, Spanish-American War, Vietnam War (or course), detailed history of WWI and WWII and at least SOME formal (albeit incomplete) understanding of the Indian Wars. And of course the Gulf Wars. And that included the history of the times in between and following that influenced (e.g., Cold War)
Why is it so acceptable that so many of the most recent generations have learned exactly NOTHING of history? This is appalling.
Aristus
(66,462 posts)This has less to do with the Cold War than the Iran hostage crisis, but the brilliance remains.
When the rest of the country was screaming for us to nuke Iran, or send in the Marines, or otherwise reduce this ancient, beautiful, and remarkable nation to rubble, my history teacher took a different tack.
One day in class, he showed us a short film about a young Iranian boy who wanted to restore an ancient mosque located in a remote town. The mosque had once been crowned with a dome decorated with beautiful blue tiles, but was now bare brick. The film followed the boy's efforts to re-discover the methods for making and glazing the tiles, and then re-decorating the dome of the mosque.
It was a gentle, serene, beautiful documentary about a people the rest of our country was hoping to kill. It really changed my perspective about Iran. I've always been thankful for that teacher, and his different way of looking at things.
Evolve Dammit
(16,763 posts)edisdead
(1,956 posts)It isnt the kids to blame but the generation that teaches them.
Evolve Dammit
(16,763 posts)they want these young people to remain ignorant of historic events. Sad, those who don't know the past are deemed to repeat it.
Basic LA
(2,047 posts)If the Soviet Union was really ever a serious threat! Yes, see Sputnik, Hungary, hydrogen bomb, space race, Army McCarthy hearings, etc!
Evolve Dammit
(16,763 posts)"Unitary Executive" ,"Deficits Don't matter". It paved the way for today.
SoFlaBro
(1,941 posts)brush
(53,866 posts)they were all white, and siding with Russia against Ukraine, saying Russia is not our enemy.
What's up with them? It's like none of them have ever had a history class of the 20th Century? None of them seem to know of Stalin, Khruschev, Brezhnev, the fucking iron curtain, the arms race and the ICBM threat.
So many uninformed people out there with little knowledge, siding with their "tribe," our main enemy and wanting an authoritarian government.
R
Evolve Dammit
(16,763 posts)eppur_se_muova
(36,289 posts)To many of us, the downfall of the Soviet Union, the downfall of Gorbachev and the ascension of Yeltsin, then his replacement by Putin, are easy to think of as "current events", not history. They don't get taught very thoroughly in school because "everyone was there" or "it just happened" or "it's news, not history". Our own recent history is so divisive that teachers and administrators are reluctant to have any detailed discussions of matters that inevitably involve partisan politics -- the political parties involved are the parties to which students' parents belong, and the parents won't tolerate what they perceive as "partisan" or "biased" history lessons. So most high school history books end at about 40-50 years before the present.
Just think how controversial any coverage of the Reagan years would be and you can see why educators mostly avoid it.
Without such education, younger Americans won't realize just how radically different today's GOP is from any political party in our past history -- including even Nixon's GOP.
MineralMan
(146,331 posts)the Wikipedia article that shows up as the first search result explains it very nicely.
People under 40 use Google all the time. You're too pessimistic.