It is anathema for adolts to be insistent that children do their homework

while the adolts fail to continue theirs.

An education system that does not encourage lifelong learning

fails itself.

A publishing industry that regards the popularity of faddish

pucky as more useful than information ultimately finds itself

sinking lower and lower into the anti-intellectual muck

until a conversation on a playground between 12 year olds is

more interesting than an entire years worth of issues of

your average adolt magazine.


History, however badly written, is a starting point for reference

to the world around you. Even comedy cannot be understood without

acess to the cultural and historical references that the writers

depend upon. Black Adder is a good case for that point.


The "news" cannot be truly comprehended if you don't have sense

of geography and history.


One of the major complaints that I have about American adolts

is that they don't seem to understand that there is a war on.

They seem to be able to blank out the fact that people are dying

in unnatural ways. Bankers and credit companies are foreclosing

on active duty personnel who are in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying

"We didn't know they were in the military."

A sense of history would provide a perspective on war outside

the tattered remains of 60s American liberalism that kept

children from thinking too much about horrible stuff

unless it involved the environment, personal rights, or

censorship.


Many people, in my experience, not only have no knowledge

of what happened before they were born, but also have completely

missed what has occurred since they were born. They don't have any interest in their birth year, either, which is a logical starting point.

If popular culture pukes up a movie, a TV series or a novel on

a particular incident in history, then that momentarily becomes

relevant, but few of these individuals will go to the effort

to fact check the movie, TV series or novel.

Which leads to the problem of fact versus fiction versus historical

fiction versus myth.

I know at least a dozen who cannot differentiate between those.

What they "know" all has the same weight in their minds.

There is no reasonable doubt or skepticism involved.

They either believe what they know or they know what they

don't believe.

It is very very hard to avoid confusing them with facts.

Then they tell you that that is just "your opinion"

against the "opinion" of the writer, moviemaker or series

producers. Horse pucky.

There is such a thing as getting the myth right.

Otherwise the culture doesn't exist at all.