Posted on 10/02/2007 9:49:23 AM PDT by World_Events
If high school juniors' answers to a World War II questionnaire were strung together, here's how history would look:
World War II took place in 19-something, when Theodore Roosevelt was president and the Germans claimed to be the best race.
Hoping to aid Third World countries, the United States joined the war to stop racism and end the dispute over Jews.
The head of the Nazis was a killer named Hitler whose evil partner, Mussolini, was president of the USSR. Ultimately, the war ended with the bombing of Iwo Jima and Hitler's suicide. Then a treaty was signed. Not every 11th-grader who answered a Chronicle questionnaire at San Francisco's Burton High School responded with such a fractured version of history. Eight of the 34 students said correctly that "Roosevelt" or "FDR" was president during most of the war, apparently remembering the subject they had studied as sophomores last spring. Most knew about the attempted genocide of the Jews, all but three recognized Hitler, and eight placed the war in the 1940s.
But others, perhaps suffering a temporary memory lapse, variously named George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Richard Nixon and Winston Churchill as the war's main president. Eighteen students wisely left the answer blank.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I have been watching the series. After reading some of the comments on that thread, I do agree that some of the political slant on it does come through, and it is a bit disappointing.
Nonetheless the tales from each veteran is quite compelling, and Burns and company do a great job of letting the viewer understand the hell WW2 veterans went through to save the world. That kind of suffering and savagery is unimaginable to me and makes me eternally grateful for their sacrifice and bravery.
It’s not the fault of either the kids or the teachers.
It’s the fault of the parents.
They, after all, delegate their responsibility to educate their children to teachers. The parents are ultimately responsible.
When my wife was in the hospital a while back one of the nurses asked me if I was in WW II. I said Yes and she asked if I was at Bunker Hill. I did wonder what was in today’s history classes but decided I was in pretty good shape for a 200 year old guy.
That’s good. I’ll have to forward it to people.
That fact alone qualifies me for membership on the Senate Armed Forces committee.
This last weekend I was at the Columbus Air Show . Featured was the likely last 'Gathering of Legends', a gathering of P-51 Mustangs and pilots.(more than 100 Mustangs, incredible)
These WWII pilots are in their 80's.
They honored 46 of the Tuskegee Airmen. Lots of wheelchairs.
Or that the Nazis wanted to "dirty bomb" NYC?
I firmly believe that posters on FR should be required to pass some kind of test like ensuring they don’t double post. /lol
Never fails to crack me up.
Expiring minds want to know.........
possible but doubtful. To understand the extent of stupor induced by leftwing brainwashing--I heard a grown man on a local call-in show last weekend, who asserted as if it were a newly exposed crime, that the Iran-Contra scandal was Ronald Reagan's way of getting the embassy hostages released, thus securing his election in 1980. The dumb fart was dead serious, and the talk show host didn't pick up on the ignorance being spewed.
That said, I got all the answers right except for the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed in the Paris Hilton. What do I win?
You might want to add a date to your list - the Russian invasion of Poland, September 17, 1939. (Not to be confused with the Soviet invasion of Poland, February 14, 1919.
Vouchers. Muslim and Mexican schools showing up all over the place. No thank you.
It must have been a Rosemary Clooney joke?
And for those guys in the Debra Lafave fan club, NO, Mrs. G wasn't hot. She looked a lot like Miss Grundy from the Archie comic books, or more accurately, like Edith Prickley from SCTV (as played by Andrea Martin).
BTW: The Burton High School named in the article is actually named "Philip & Sala Burton Academic High School," (HA!) and was initially named after Philip Burton, longtime Congressman and legendary California Democratic Party power broker whose machine gave us Barbara Boxer, Jerry Brown, Willie Brown, and Tom Lantos, among others. When he died, his widow Sala ran for election and won in a walk. When Sala died, the Dems ran fundraising marvel Nancy Pelosi.
The rest, sadly, is history.
That's hilarious.
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