Today is the anniversary of the climactic moment of the Battle of Gettysburg–Pickett’s Charge. Having been unsuccessful in trying to break the Union Army on its flanks, Robert E. Lee attacked the middle of the line: and lost a whole infantry division, and the battle.
Well, the History Channel–partially owned by Disney Inc., of Mickey Mouse fame–came up with some Mickey Mouse history today when they illustrated a tweet about Gettysburg with a picture of George Washington (https://www.infowars.com/history-channel-tweets-george-washington-fighting-at-gettysburg/). You know–the guy who was long dead by the time the Civil War started.
Oops.
Well, hey, they all went to public school, too! Who said you had to know any real history to operate a history channel on TV?
At least they didn’t show Obama delivering the Gettysburg Address.
George Washington at Gettysburg? That would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad. Hey, but all those dead white guys are interchangeable, right?
Yeh thay was al biggits.
To make matters worse, they wuz all heteronormative too. 🙂
If the people teaching history don’t know history, how can they teach it?
That’s a great question. I’ve had some interesting conversations regarding history of late and the bottom line, as far as I can tell: young people have not been taught history.
One day, at a public middle school, I took over a sixth-grade class on the day they were to begin studying the Middle Ages. I said, “You’re in luck today, because I probably know the Middle Ages better than anyone you’ll ever meet. (I didn’t know Weavingword back then!) So… ask me anything, anything at all, about the Middle Ages, and I can probably answer it.”
Would you believe it? Those kids ate it up! They were sorry when the period was over.
They were only sixth-graders, though. The hunger for knowledge hadn’t yet been eddicated out of them. It wouldn’t have worked with the eighth grade.
That’s it in a nutshell. The more they “perfect” education, the more they squelch the trill of discovery. The school system is no longer about teaching.
It’s about landing nice pensions for union members.
I saw a chart yesterday which showed the level of pension funding by state. Illinois is around 40%, according to the chart, but only one state is at or above 100%. I wouldn’t want to be dependent on a public pension these days.
As long as the fund holds out, it’s great to be a unionized teacher. The only way you can ever lose your job is if you commit suicide, you retire nice and early, and get paid handsomely for doing nothing the rest of your life.
. . . as long as the fund holds out. As it turns out, most of these retirement funds are Ponzi Schemes and there can be only one outcome to those.