On Pearl Harbor.
So one of my co-managers has a 13-year old son. She was mentioning how the anniversary of Pearl Harbor passed yesterday. Now remembering what happened on each individual day isn’t a huge deal to me. I know what’s already happened. However, she asked her son if they talked about Pearl Harbor in school. As it turns, not only did he learn nothing of the Japanese preemptive strike against Pearl Harbor, but he knew nothing of it, period.
Big, giant WTF.
Has our education system seriously slipped that far since I was a kid? Is it that possible? I remember learning about stuff like that all the time. To the point where I thought, “Yeah, they attacked us, WE GET IT.” It’s kind of a big deal in terms of american history. You don’t even need to know anything else.
The fact that the American government had advance knowledge of this attack, well, seems to be extra credit. Yup, our government wanted a way to get into Dubya Dubya Two, but public support favored Isolationism and keeping our mits to ourselves at the time. Nothing like getting the crap beat out of us to rally the american citizens to the classic “BOMB THEM!” chant.
Anyone remember that propaganda regarding WMD’s earlier this decade? Pretty transparent to anyone with half a brain that there WERE NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, and that our government was LYING to us. What ended up happening? It raised public support for a bullshit war (against a country we’re STILL occupying), and after the fact they quietly admitted WHOOPS, THERE WERE NO DUBYA EM DEES!
On a completely tangental note, I’m reminded of the 1933 fire of a german federal building. The germans set fire to one of their own buildings to give reason to restrict civil liberties. That little factoid was actually in my own history book in high school. It was right there!
Anyway. Just. I know I’m a little young for this, but I just get a little scared when kids just don’t know basic history. I don’t have much else to say.
That’s ridiculous! I mean, Pearl Harbor was practically embedded in my mind all throughout my academic career. I had a conversation about that recently. The only thing one kid knew about Pear Harbor was that it was important enough to make a movie out of >_<
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I could go into a long rant about this but I’ll try to keep it short. Our government knew there was a war coming with Japan. They didn’t know just where or when. Your first noter mentioned they made a movie about Pearl Harbor. She was probably thinking about the movie titled “Pearl Harbor”. That movie was a “Chick Flick”. A much more accurate movie was Tora Tora Tora. The possibility of an attack on Pearl Harbor was considered but rejected as no one believed the Japanese could mount such an attack. But I agree, not enough history is taught. 🙂 – – – –
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I was reading a discussion board the other day where everyone was complaining about people not knowing proper word usage (the one that comes to mind is formally vs formerly) it was entertaining. But what got me was that there was someone who worked for a school district or knew some big wig there that actually said “reading/grammar isn’t important. They get all the information they need off the internet” THAT is a big fat WTF to me too. It seriously makes me want to home school my (future) kids!
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*nods* I remember learning about it in school but last year I watched a long history-channel special on FDR… disturbing and interesting. We’ll try public school next year but I swear if it doesn’t meant my high expectations I will pull my kids out and homeschool them. Education is way too important. If a child doesn’t learn it’s schools fault AND the parents fault.
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*meet not meant.
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