As someone who did pay attention in history class(es), and who’s been explaining/teaching history to tour clients in Europe for the last 20 years, I can tell you that what we’re seeing here is not a recent phenomenon. History as a subject suffers by the very nature of the education system, primarily taught as a mind-numbing rote subject packed with poorly contextualized dates and pre-digested concepts which often have very little (or exactly nothing) to do with the actual events.
So long as education continues to avoid developing critical thinking skills — which are a bad thing if one wants to maintain a largely compliant populace (hint hint) — this will remain the social norm.
And a doobie in hand is no excuse. Some of my best and deepest conversations about history and socio-political/economic material have happened on the wrong end of the bong. It’s not the smoke, it’s the dope smoking it…
Defense.gov News Photo 110426-A-7597S-183: U.S. Special Operations service members with Special Operations Task Force South board two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters following a clearing operation in Panjwa'i district in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, on April 25, 2011. Source: Wikimedia.
As someone who did pay attention in history class(es), and who’s been explaining/teaching history to tour clients in Europe for the last 20 years, I can tell you that what we’re seeing here is not a recent phenomenon. History as a subject suffers by the very nature of the education system, primarily taught as a mind-numbing rote subject packed with poorly contextualized dates and pre-digested concepts which often have very little (or exactly nothing) to do with the actual events.
So long as education continues to avoid developing critical thinking skills — which are a bad thing if one wants to maintain a largely compliant populace (hint hint) — this will remain the social norm.
And a doobie in hand is no excuse. Some of my best and deepest conversations about history and socio-political/economic material have happened on the wrong end of the bong. It’s not the smoke, it’s the dope smoking it…