Why are Americans so stunningly ignorant?

RightSideNews.com ^ | 11 Nov., 2014 | Bruce Deitrick Price

[right way right]

Public schools don’t teach, they indoctrinate and give tests, the students are only shown how to pass tests.
They don’t think, they parrot the idiocy they are told to parrot.

A nation that once had God among them, but then turns from God, will be destroyed.

God will not be mocked.

[Louis Foxwell]

A people inculcated in our history cannot be made servants of the state.

Nailed it!!

Stupidity is the coin of the totalitarian regime.

[JRandomFreeper]

Parents and grandparents need to teach our children.

It takes time away from what I could be doing. I wasted a summer teaching kids fundamentals of physics, and chemistry (their mom hates me worse now, but she got the same education) and a smattering of languages and history.

It requires a commitment of time. Many would rather lay in front of the TV than share their knowledge. Unless I screw up on FR, and then, they will bother to correct me.

Abe Lincoln was during the Revolutionary war? Right?

/johnny

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

In answer to the question posed; it requires effort to think, thinking is hard. Much better for many people is eating, drinking, drugging, copulating, evacuating the bowels, snoring and free tickets to “The Games.”

[Michael.SF.]

with his stunning take on the CHINESE attack at Pearl Harbor...

I am reminded of this quote:

"Did the Japanese go and sit down and have dinner with Pearl Harbor before they bombed 'em?"-- Jerome Brown

[I want the USA back]

A typical education is not about thinking. It’s about remembering enough to pass the test.

[Johnny_cash]

“Radical Left teachers unions, Marxist college professors, national media an appendage of the Democrat party, depraved Hollyweird celubutard culture....need I gone on?”

We have a winner and yes you could go on and on and on...........

[ConservativeStatement]

Saw a reporter on a business channel this week reporting from Amazon’s HQs. She said “Everything in the world is LITERALLY on these shelves.” Click.

[Sherman Logan]

Which Lee? There have been quite a few US soldiers with that name. Including several in the Revolution.

[Michael.SF.]

I am actually the guy who both hired, then later suggested he look around (he did and he left). I searched his family a bit. His mother is/was a Federal judge and his father an attorney.

Some times the acorn does fall far from the tree, I guess.

[Louis Foxwell]

Peruvia

Capital of Bolivia.

Go on. Tell me I’m wrong.

[Resolute Conservative]

TV. They stopped reading.

[Michael.SF.]

I am going to assume you are kidding.

[JRandomFreeper]

If you don't have the facts, all the critical thinking in the world doesn't help.

I showed one of the twins a "your argument is invalid" poster that showed Neils Bohr and Sachmo.

I explained that I didn't expect her to understand it.

She pointed out that was Bohr. And who was the guy on the trumpet?

Sigh... We did some jazz training that evening.

But she did know Bohrs from the electron level 'thingy' that he figured out.

There is hope. Just needs some work.

Lots of work.

/johnny

[Breto]

one reason.. Public school and TV.

[discostu]

We spend a lot of time teaching people stuff that isn’t really useful. I mean honestly if you’re not actually teaching history when was the last time it mattered in your life if the Revolutionary War and Civil War came first? There’s some level of “good American” that probably should know that, but it’s just not part of life, it doesn’t make me better at my job, doesn’t put food on the table. And really even on the “good American” level the dates aren’t nearly as important as the whys, that’s the part that shaped the country.

[Responsibility2nd]

Go on. Tell me I’m wrong.

__________________________________________

I can’t. I don’t speak Peruvian or Bolivian.

(Nor Austrian either, for that matter)

[JRandomFreeper]

In 5 minutes, without them knowing it, I can teach kids which war came first (revolutionary vs civil) and in which war preserved food made it's debut.

Painless.

It doesn't take a week.

I reject your assertion and will continue to teach kids 'useless' stuff that actually turns out to be useful.

/johnny

[atomic conspiracy]

"But it receives far too much emphasis in conventional education, especially in this day and age when one can look up virtually any fact in a matter of seconds.”

Yes, you can look up practically anything these days but without a framework of basic factual knowledge you don't what to look up or even that you should look it up. For instance, you work in an ER. You have been told to watch out for patients who have recently been in West Africa. A very sick patient comes in and says he was recently in Liberia. It would be easy to look it up and find that Liberia is indeed in West Africa but without some inkling of that fact, how would you know to look it up in the first place? What if you don't know that there is more than one country is West Africa or that "Liberia" is the name of a country at all and not some resort in Mexico?

[Responsibility2nd]

I so disagree.

If you don’t know which war came first, then the chances of you knowing anything relevant or even fundamentally necessary are also pretty slim.

Is it really important to know the Revolutionary War came first? Is it really necessary to know how to dress for a job interview? Really necessary to know that babies can’t be left alone while you go drinking?