mmmmmmmmmmtotally off thread but this has annoyed

[jeffhop]

k, my son is 10 yrs old yet is being taught at school about ancient egypt and rome.  why?   my point is surely in this day and age it should be ww1-2. when i was his age i could have named any plane from ww2 (i still can ) and most from ww1.  im sure he hasnt a clue what a spitfire or hurricane is!!  ( my son lives with my ex wife)but i will try to educate him,   what do the other parents on here think

[Carbon_Angus]

maybe it's a good place too start

I was interested in dinosaurs..a diffent brand of history when I was his age as well as pyramids, and gladiators

when he gets older, hopefully he will enjoy learning "ancient" as well as "modern"

it is most important to set a good example to your son...a tough job to do..I know!

[smiley=beer.gif]

[Simon]

Yes I know where your coming from,
my family often get fed up with me pointing out
modern historic information mainly from WW2,
but it does sink in and they do understand the
sacrifices and hardship so many endured in recent times,
one thing I insisted the was that World at War programme when it covered the holocaust,
I have to say they are taught more about it in senior school,
my son was fascinated when a survivor from concentration camp came to the school and dicussed
all his experiances,his whole year group was fascinated
and the amount of information he took in was amazing despite its often horrific content,
take heart once your son gets to senior school he should cover WW2 its part of the curriculum,

we are quite lucky where we live as sometimes we
have the Battle of Britain flight go over,
amazing sight Lancaster flanked by a Spitfire and Hurricane,
even my wife can tell just by the sound when a RR merlin engine is coming,caught her out the other day,
2 Mustangs circled over same noise different plane,
every time these old planes come over its great to see
the young and old all rushing out to look point a stare.

Have to say if your unhappy with his modern history
education then my friend its upto you to make sure
this vital history is not missed.

Simon.

[Colin]

Absolutely agree !
(from one saddo plane spotter to another.......<GRIN>)

But I think you're confusing History and Technology, I think it's important to understand ancient cultures, i.e. Rome/Egypt as well as more recent ones.
Being able to name any aircraft from WWII isn't really history (it's not big and it's not clever either! Just because I can also do it.....!)
Understanding the causes of WWI / II is more important and then re-applying that to the world today........i.e. why was Japan forced to attack the US? ..........Trade wars/Resource fears/economic collapse etc etc...

But Technology is more interesting.......which was the better fighter? a Spitfire or a Mustang?

With unlimited Oil, Me262's, King Tiger Tanks and a "New York" Nuclear Bomber we'd be doing this Forum in German!
(Wishful thinking on my part........)

[Matno]

we'd be doing this Forum in German!

Was ist denn los damit?


I agree that the important lessons to be learned are that history repeats itself over and over. We can see it all around us. Whenever people are comfortable in their freedom, society starts to slowly lose its moral fiber, power tends to get concentrated in a corrupt few, and eventually, freedom is eroded to the point that people rebel and start the whole cycle over again. This was just as true in ancient Rome as it is today. However, the argument could be made that the corruption now is on a much larger scale, and although the moral fiber of America (and the rest of the developed world) may have slightly improved after world war II (not counting our gov't, which was at it's worst under FDR), it's been declining ever since.

But then, after 9 yrs of close contact with U.N. ambassadors, delegates, and employees, I have nothing positive to say about the current trend toward globalization. You could say I'm a conspiracy theorist, except that I've seen too much first hand to be a "theorist." Ah yes, history in the remaking...

[Simon]

Hmmmmm
I don't think Jeff here is trying to say the education system should teach what plane is what etc,
its the worry that these recent conflicts (WW1 WW2)
are getting swept under the carpet,IMHO its to make us good little Europeans,like thats gonna happen,
we aren't allowed to mention the war.

Colin, Spitfire or Mustage, its the Mosquito for me
only plane that counted as 2 kills if shot down by the Luftwaffe, it lived upto its name,pain in the ass,
Mustage easily had the measure of the Me262 once the pilots re avalued there tactics (just saw a programme recently on this)

Simon.

 

[bikendan]

 ::)though i don't have any kids, i've worked in the education field w/schools/districts. the people setting policy and curriculums are people who have no concept of what's going on in the world. they are from a frame of mind that is not realistic. they live in a fantasy utopia that doesn't allow for the true nature of the world.
jeffhop, i too, knew every WWII plane and name by the time i was 10. i read every WWII book i could get my hands on. i watched every war movie that came on tv. in high school. i did a term paper on the battle of the bulge.
with what's going on in the world with terrorism and extremism, i think WWII is extremely relevent. with discussions of nazism, kamikazes and the holocaust, a child can have a better understanding of what they see in the media.
there might be a backlash from teachers to all of the focus on WWII, in the past few years. such as "private ryan and band of brothers". also the WWII memorial and lots of documentaries.
teachers might think that there's too much out there on WWII and think that other times in history, need
to be taught.
just my 2 cents.

[jazclrint]

I'm only a music ed major, so I'm over my head here, but I am big on history being taught, and you have to start someplace.  And Egypt is where you start.  He will eventually get to WWII if his education is anything like mine was, and will go into much greater detail about WWII than he ever will about Egypt.

On a side note I don't know my WWII planes so well, but my thing growing up was modern jets.  Eagels, Hornets, Phantom IIs, Falcons, Warthogs, the new Raptors are bass ass, but my favorite will always be the Tomcats.

Nothing pisses me off than than someone trying to tell me an F-16 is a Navy plane (there is an N as in Navy version, but they use them at Top Gun).  And that it can land on an Aircraft carrier more than once.  But there is no reason people shouldn't what was and is defending their sky today.  They don't need to know all the details, but just some decent trivia would be nice.

[Dennis]

Jeff,

Don't worry, man, WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam are all covered in history classes as students get older. In fact,  the topics covered in history now are much more comprehensive than when I was in hs. (I am 50). Back in my high school days, what was called "world history" was really "european history". Africa, Asia, and South America were only  mentioned when European explorers went there. That has been corrected in today's history curriculum (at least here in NY, USA).
as one of the other posters stated, one of the big problems with school curricula is that it is set by  non-educators. here in NY, there was a revamping of the curriculum standards a few years ago, and one of the main people involved was Jack Welch (former CEO of GE). that's right, the Jack Welch that advocated "outsourcing" to improve quarterly profits, forget the long term plans, and the Jack Welch that was found to falsified the profit and loss statements of GE when he was CEO.

also, as Mark Twain once said "First, God created the Idiots. That was just for practice. Then He created School Boards". Case in point, the Kansas School Board which recently redefined science by removing the word "natural" from "natural explanations of observed phenomena" to allow the requirement of teaching "intelligent design" in "science" classes. they realized, at least, that intelligent design is not science, so they redefined science. amazing, isn't it?

"globalization" - its just the rationalization for forgetting about the future of America in exchange for short term profit taking.

as you can see, I am quite opinionated on this subject, being a teacher and someone who firmly believes that physics should be the first science class hs kids take. right now, its earth science, biology, chemistry, physics here in NY. it should be physics, chem, bio as you cannot fully understand chem without physics, and you can't fully do bio with an understanding of chem. in fact, bio teachers have to teach some chem, and chem teachers have to teach some physics. why do we have the current order? it comes from the Committee of 10 in the late 1890's, none of which were educators, they were all economists, industrialists, and the like. we educators are not at fault, its the people running the schools (administrators - who couldn't wait to get out of the classroom, and parents - most of whom are well-meaning but are not education experts).

btw, there is a Corsair, a P-47, and a B-25 that are based at a nearby airport that I often see flying over on my weekend rides. they are soooo cool. I can name ( and recognize) every plane from WWI through Vietnam and the present. I even sat in (had a pic taken) in an F-101B Voodoo when I was a kid, now that was a cool plane.

sorry for the outpouring,
[smiley=groucho.gif]

[will]

You wanna see "Intelligent Design"?  Just take a look at my 856's! [smiley=nod.gif]

As a survivor of an unbalanced, drug inspired, first name teacher, hippie, ultra liberal education through secondary school, I can say that children are resilient. Regardless of the claptrap I was injected with, I've recovered and developed a fairly balanced and independent view of history. (I suppose four years at a military academy was helpful there.)

As a typical Yank, I really admire the British and European determination to keep the lessons of the WW's alive. Few of us "get it" and even fewer of us even know the Blitz ever happened. [smiley=bomb.gif] Really... I'm not kidding!

But my girls sure know the words to the "Texas National Anthem"!  

The problem with learning history is every day there's more of it. I just can't seem to keep up!

[Matno]

Dennis,

Couldn't agree more about the order of subjects. That's the order I took them in when I was in college. Much better than the backwards way that we did it in high school. However, the problem is that kids don't really learn math much at all any more, so that makes Physics more difficult for them. I say hit them hard with math early, so the rest of the sciences can be in their proper order (I started learning algebra in the second grade, but that was at a private school).

Will,

"Texas, our Texas, All hail the mighty state..."

--Matt "Matno Green
Born and raised in Texas, attended 13 different schools before I got to college - including private, evangelical (which I'm not), public, European, and even (gasp) home school, raised by a Navy fighter jock (dad flew A-4's), and had nearly the entire Pacific fleet hanging from my ceiling as a kid (models arranged in dogfighting positions). Oh, and I've travelled all over Egypt, which has fascinating history. Perhaps not quite as politically revelant as some more recent events, but a vast treasury (no pun intended) nonetheless...

[Dennis]

Mat,
interesting point about math. They still don't know how to use math when they get to me in physics as juniors and seniors. Anyway, many states are now doing physics first and what is taught to 9th graders is generally known as "conceptual physics" which doesn't have very much math in it. physics is not just applied math, as many people think. here in NYS, the state standards require kids to solve many math problems and alot (too many) of teachers teach it as kind of a "plug and chug" type class. I teach honors and AP so I can get away with having kids learn concepts using discovery/inquiry lessons, and then making mathematical models to make predictions based on what they found.(more along the lines of what real physicists do). its a very effective technique, but does take much more time than traditional methods, but since these kids are smarter than the average bear, it works for most topics. of course, there are some things we can't do in school, such as use radioactive materials and particle accelerators, so some units require direct teaching.

anyhow, you make a good point. I've heard that many countries in Europe require two years of physics in secondary school, whereas in the US its usually an extra science tacked on at the end and less than 25% of US  HS grads take any kind of physics. here on LI, more than 60% of students take some physics.

anyway, if more people knew more about physics there would be far fewer SUV's (not many in Europe) and more bikes on the road and trails.

[smiley=groucho.gif]

[Frankd3000]

While i'm not a parent (at least not that i've been made aware of) I just wanted to pop in to say it's really nice to see what parents REALLY think around the globe about what education SHOULD represent.

I wish the "system" would listen more. [smiley=worry.gif]

[Sprucey]

Someone said it above - maybe we should go backwards.

I was bored stupid by kins of England dates xyzy - ww - but the importance of key events in histoty that have shaped our lives are vital. Many are very old - rome and egypt were societies on which we base our language and number systems (maybe the Greeks come in here as well).
The English civil war is absolutely fundamental about modern UK system of parliamentary democracy which in teurn effects the demorcacy of the USA.

I understand these things more now in the light of more recent civil wares (Bosnia) - and it brings home the pain of neighbour and brother fighting neighbour and brother.

All history has had a bearing in both social and georgraogic sense of who we all are today - the WW2 is important but to my my mind less critical - the WW1 had more impact on Social change in the UK.

My 2cents worth

Sprucey

[Matno]

Personally, while I think history is important, I'm far more interested in studying the lives of great people of the past. The events are secondary. I like to find out what made people great (and in some cases, what made them terrible in a great way).

One of my personal favorites is Winston Churchill. What a man he was!