Posted on 01/27/2015 6:52:59 AM PST by ilovesarah2012
Bill O’Reilly sent Jesse Watters on a mission to Aspen, Colo., for the X Games, where Watters asked some standard history questions and got very unlikely answers.
When was George Washington president? Watters heard answers that ranged from 1776 to 1983 to “way before I was born.”
What countries did America fight in World War II? Not Spain, France, or Russia, like some respondents thought.
Who bombed Pearl Harbor? Well, it wasn’t China or Korea.
Hear the cringe-worthy answers to these questions and more in the video above.
(Excerpt) Read more at insider.foxnews.com ...
One idiot couldn’t even name our first president.
"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people...," said John Adams. And Thomas Jefferson declared: "Whenever the people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government...The boys of the rising generation are to be the men of the next, and the sole guardians of the principles we deliver over to them."Early generations of Americans were taught the principles upon which their nation had developed its Constitution. The Founders believed that the real security for liberty would be a people who could understand those ideas which are necessary to preserve liberty and who could perceive approaching threats to their freedom. For that reason, a primary purpose of the schools was to teach boys and girls to read and write so that they could study the ideas of freedom. A popular textbook for children was entitled "Catechism on the Constitution."; Written by Arthur J. Stansbury and published in 1828, it contained questions and answers on the principles of the American political system.
Tocqueville's Democracy In America , written in the 1830's, described America's aggressive process of universal education on the Constitution and the political process:
"It cannot be doubted that in the United States the instruction of the people powerfully contributes to the support of the democratic republic; and such must always be the case, I believe, where the in struction which enlightens the understanding is not separated from the moral education ...." The American citizen, he said, "..will inform you what his rights are and by what means he exercises them .. In the United States, politics are the end and aim of education ... every citizen receives the elementary notions of human knowledge; he is taught, moreover, the doctrines and the evidences of his religion, the history of his country, and the leading features of its Constitution .... it is extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a person wholly ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon .... It is difficult to imagine the incredible rapidity with which thought circulates in the midst of these deserts [wilderness]. I do not think that so much intellectual activity exists in the most enlightened and populous districts of France."
Research shows that, beginning in the early 1900's, the teaching of the philosophy undergirding the Constitution and the principles incorporated in it began to be eliminated from the public schools of America. Consequently, several generations of Americans have not been taught the principles which would enable them to be guardians of their own liberty, and they have not been able to serve as "watchmen on the walls"(JFK) who could recognize encroachments when they occurred. Even most of the law schools do not train the nation's law students in the philosophical foundations of the Constitution.
It was John Adams who said: "The foundation of every government is some principle or passion in the minds of the people." Clearly, the Founders' passion was liberty, and in order to secure that liberty, they sought out and incorporated into the United States Constitution those ideas and principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence.
The French historian, Guizot, once asked James Russell Lowell, "How long will the American republic endure?" Lowell replied: "As long as the IDEAS of the men who founded it continue dominant"(The preceding section is quoted from this essay.
Watters' 2014 questions to young adults, though striking only the surface of knowledge of American history, reveal the degree to which a failed government education system may have served to "erase" critical IDEAS from its history curriculum for youth.
‘The land of the free stuff and the home of the stupid.’
Waters said in an interview that they don’t sort out the responders to get the dumb ones, what you see is what he got for answers.
Oh my!
I was afraid of that.
“Idiocracy” is slowly coming to fruition right before your eyes.
I LOVED the lady that was half dressed in the snow and said ONLY her fingertips were cold, of course her hands were the ONLY thing covered!!!!! Our country IS screwed!!!! I truly believe that most of us have more of an education with just our high school diploma than a college grad of today!!!!
I wanna go to Aspen.
Could have been worse - the teacher could have said “World War Eye-Eye” but I’m sure the kid would have still been in trouble for laughing.
HF,
OK, 'II'
“And they VOTE!”
Worse still they PROCREATE!
That told me they teach about the evil white slave owners starting the war and the evil white capitalists hurting the people.
Ha! I am often filled with self doubt over homeschooling...wondering if they would be better off in school, are they learning enough, am I not preparing them well enough for college, etc. I guess I can quit worrying.
For about 12 years I worked an off duty security job at one of our local McDonalds. I use to periodically ask the teenage and sometimes older workers five questions.
1. Give me any part of the First Amendment.
2. Who is buried in Grant’s tomb.
3. Who did we fight in the Civil War.
4. Who bombed Pearl Harbor
5. Who did we fight in WWII
Probably asked over a hundred people over the years. Only one person was able to answer all five questions. Had one college kid who told me she was a history major. She answered none of the questions correctly.
The answer would depend on how you define "we", Kemo Sabe...
Aspen: home away from home for the upscale, bipartisan political class.
The folks in Aspen won’t agree that the U.S.A. fought their recent ancestors in World War II.
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