HISTORY EDUCATION: Why are we so dumb?

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Watching the political news on TV, I was amazed, as I always am, at how “stupid” Sarah Palin is and how much media attention she garners by doing “stupid” things. When I say “stupid”, I mean she does not know shit about anything and especially history.

Her latest gaff was while visiting Boston and the Paul Revere house there and saying how he rode out to warn the British? I think and I hope, every kid in America knows the famous midnight ride by Paul Revere warning the Americans that “…the British are coming…” So how did Sarah Palin miss out on that lesson in grade school?

This was not her first historical error and she had the nerve to defend her error on national TV. She obviously is not the first historical dummy in the political world; Michele Bachmann from Minnesota is another one (not picking on women).

My point and Leonard Pitts, Jr. (Free Press) was also bothered by this, is that history as a subject, does not seem important anymore and we are becoming a nation of history dumbbells.

History has been my passion from day one, even in grade school. I had actually many passions but history remained my passion to this very day and I feel strongly, that a sound knowledge of history is absolutely necessary for anyone wishing to intellectually participate in the world around him or her.

One good reason to know your history is that you cannot be fooled by jack asses like Sarah Palin who can say anything and you and millions of others, believe since she is on TV so she cannot be wrong.

Knowledge of history enables you to challenge many that try to push revisionist history on a dumbed - down public which, believe it or not, happens all the time. One example is the right-wind religious nuts trying to say we have always been a Christian nation and our Founding Fathers intended that from the beginning…FALSE and there are many, many so called facts believed by many people that are utterly FALSE.

Even some of our textbooks used in class have falsely slanted information because the content is controlled by some Texas School Board that is rabidly Christian and want the textbooks to reflect their way of thinking instead of the TRUTH.

Well, this is a subject that I am very passionate about and I hope there are others like me that will keep the fires burning on this issue…remember Fahrenheit 451?

Related articles

• Sarah Palin's Most Disastrous Year (themoderatevoice.com)
• Sarah Palin's garbled history of the Cold War - The Fact Checker - The Washington Post (craigb59.wordpress.com)
• Stupid things I've heard recently (emvlovely.wordpress.com)
• The Dangers of Rewriting History (geardiary.com)
• D.R. Burgess: Paul Revere's Last Stand: Why History Matters (huffingtonpost.com)
• Sarah Palin Swears This Is Not A Sarah Palin Campaign Video [Video] (jezebel.com)
• Palinist history (timesunion.com)