California lawmakers pass bill to teach gay history

Started by garbon, July 06, 2011, 01:06:47 PM

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MadImmortalMan

Quote from: Ideologue on July 08, 2011, 04:48:23 PM

I dunno, lots of kids liked Captain Planet.

Only kids wouldn't question the logic of a villain spending all kinds of money to create a factory with the sole purpose of producing sludge to dump in the ocean.  :P
"Stability is destabilizing." --Hyman Minsky

"Complacency can be a self-denying prophecy."
"We have nothing to fear but lack of fear itself." --Larry Summers

Oexmelin

Quote from: The Brain on July 08, 2011, 04:50:00 PM
A major problem with history as a school subject is that history isn't a mature science. It's not even close.

What's a mature science?
Que le grand cric me croque !

katmai

Quote from: Oexmelin on July 08, 2011, 05:22:46 PM
Quote from: The Brain on July 08, 2011, 04:50:00 PM
A major problem with history as a school subject is that history isn't a mature science. It's not even close.

What's a mature science?

Brainiac is last person to ask about mature.
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son

The Brain

Quote from: Oexmelin on July 08, 2011, 05:22:46 PM
Quote from: The Brain on July 08, 2011, 04:50:00 PM
A major problem with history as a school subject is that history isn't a mature science. It's not even close.

What's a mature science?

Well for one thing it's a science that is building a body of understanding that is based on a scientific method, a body which therefore tends to grow and only experience minor rewriting. Physics is an example of a mature science.

History today is roughly where physics was in the Middle Ages. You have a bunch of people who have opinions, but you have no working scientific procedure in place for establishing which opinions belong in the body of understanding and which do not.
Women want me. Men want to be with me.

The Brain

Quote from: katmai on July 08, 2011, 05:28:24 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on July 08, 2011, 05:22:46 PM
Quote from: The Brain on July 08, 2011, 04:50:00 PM
A major problem with history as a school subject is that history isn't a mature science. It's not even close.

What's a mature science?

Brainiac is last person to ask about mature.

Pick on someone your own size.
Women want me. Men want to be with me.

katmai

Quote from: The Brain on July 08, 2011, 05:34:42 PM
Quote from: katmai on July 08, 2011, 05:28:24 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on July 08, 2011, 05:22:46 PM
Quote from: The Brain on July 08, 2011, 04:50:00 PM
A major problem with history as a school subject is that history isn't a mature science. It's not even close.

What's a mature science?

Brainiac is last person to ask about mature.

Pick on someone your own size.

I am,


you fatty.
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son

The Brain

Quote from: katmai on July 08, 2011, 05:35:16 PM
Quote from: The Brain on July 08, 2011, 05:34:42 PM
Quote from: katmai on July 08, 2011, 05:28:24 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on July 08, 2011, 05:22:46 PM
Quote from: The Brain on July 08, 2011, 04:50:00 PM
A major problem with history as a school subject is that history isn't a mature science. It's not even close.

What's a mature science?

Brainiac is last person to ask about mature.

Pick on someone your own size.

I am,


you fatty.

WTF I'm gorgeous.
Women want me. Men want to be with me.

katmai

Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son

The Brain

Women want me. Men want to be with me.

Ideologue

Quote from: MadImmortalMan on July 08, 2011, 05:03:16 PM
Quote from: Ideologue on July 08, 2011, 04:48:23 PM

I dunno, lots of kids liked Captain Planet.

Only kids wouldn't question the logic of a villain spending all kinds of money to create a factory with the sole purpose of producing sludge to dump in the ocean.  :P

I want to see the Captain Planet episode where he warms up by straight-up murdering some Japanese whalers, before reducing Riyadh to a big smoking pile of debris.
Kinemalogue
Current reviews: The 'Burbs (9/10); Gremlins 2: The New Batch (9/10); John Wick: Chapter 2 (9/10); A Cure For Wellness (4/10)

katmai

Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son

dps

Quote from: alfred russel on July 08, 2011, 03:02:45 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 08, 2011, 02:55:11 PM

I think you vastly over-estimate the historical knowledge of most americans.  And I consider myself a history buff and I've never heard of the Tariff of Abominations.
I would be disappointed if college bound students were unaware of the tariff. It was not only a pivotal economic event but also a critical moment in the increasing sectionalism of American politics.

Spend any time talking to incoming freshmen, and I think you'll be badly disappointed.

It is probably safe to assume that every American college freshman knows the following:*

1.  At some point in the distant past the United States fought a war of independence against a major European or Asian power.  An extraordinary Tea Party was a factor.

2.  George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy, and Richard Nixon served as presidents of the United States.  Washington was the first president and Lincoln also lived a long time ago, while the latter two were in the twentieth century.  Ronald Reagan and George Bush were more recent occupants of the Oval Office.

3.  The United States still suffers from the horrors of its slaveholding past, whenever that was.  The Civil War, which took place some time between 1750 and 1930, was mixed up in this.

4.  Adolf Hitler (a foreigner of some kind) was a very bad man.

5.  There was at least one World War, but absolutely not more than three.

*I didn't make this up--it's from a book about errors that college history students have made on exams and assignments, compiled by a history professor.  The above was his summation of what he's learned to expect to be the limits of the historical knowledge of his freshment students.


Ideologue

Like all such public displays of errors, it's no doubt edited to make people sound dumber than they are, like those goofy interview-the-public sketches people do for cheap laughs.  Vanishly few Americans could be really be unaware that we're English.
Kinemalogue
Current reviews: The 'Burbs (9/10); Gremlins 2: The New Batch (9/10); John Wick: Chapter 2 (9/10); A Cure For Wellness (4/10)

Ed Anger

Quote from: Ideologue on July 08, 2011, 06:31:45 PM
Like all such public displays of errors, it's no doubt edited to make people sound dumber than they are, like those goofy interview-the-public sketches people do for cheap laughs.  Vanishly few Americans could be really be unaware that we're English.

Don't call me English, you poophead.

That is an insult. You might as well call me a geordie bastard.
Stay Alive...Let the Man Drive

grumbler

Quote from: Ideologue on July 08, 2011, 06:31:45 PM
Like all such public displays of errors, it's no doubt edited to make people sound dumber than they are, like those goofy interview-the-public sketches people do for cheap laughs.  Vanishly few Americans could be really be unaware that we're English.
:yes:  No one would buy a book that showed that freshmen were not silly and stupid.

I am sure someone has written another book showing how silly and stupid history professors are.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!