Because I don't have kids/grandkids, I really don't have a clue what they teach in schools these days. Do kids memorize the multiplication tables? Learn to sound out words? Explain things they've read to demonstrate comprehension? Write out their spelling homework?
But I do remember pretty clearly what I learned in school, back in the good old days that were only a step or two removed from Laura Ingalls Wilder and her one room schoolhouse.
Quite a bit of what I learned turned out to be stuff and nonsense that has had limited (i.e., no) application in my actual real life.
I went to parochial school, and we were required to learn by heart the answers to all kabillion (400-plus, anyway) questions contained in the Baltimore 2 catechism, beginning with the relatively easy ones like "Who made us?" up to the more abstract and complex questions around what happens to the bodies of the just (good things) vs. the bodies of the unjust (hellishly bad things).
But, who knows. It may come in handy yet that I know the difference between a plenary and partial indulgence.
And, even in grammar school, where days were a combination of abject boredom and abject terror, I did learn some things that proved to be valuable.
I can do arithmetic in my head. I can locate Egypt on the map. (I put Egypt in here because a lot of the countries I learned about in grammar school, e.g., the Belgian Congo, no longer exist.) I can sound out a big, unfamiliar word with some likelihood that I'll pronounce it correctly. Even if I will have forgotten the title and author of a book I finished a few hours ago, I'm a really good reader, with excellent reading comprehension. I know my state capitals.
Plus I can still get a few stanzas into Paul Revere's Ride and recite O Captain, My Captain in its entirety. Maybe not much more useful than being able to explain a plenary indulgence. But it's something.
In high school, the learning got more sophisticated. There, I learned how to write a compelling essay, to think through an argument, to research a topic, to take a long complex article and pare it down to its essential meaning. I learned what good literature is, and the difference between poetry and doggerel. I learned how to stand up in front of a group and speak. Etc.
I also learned some practical skills that proved useful during my business career. Learning how to sit there while someone goes off on an irrational rant - as happened on occasion throughout my grammar and high school days, when a nun went into high gear - stood me in excellent stead in business.
And although I don't actually remember it being taught, somewhere along the way, I learned about the Holocaust.
Maybe it was reading The Diary of Anne Frank. Or watching old World War II movies on Boston movie time - which wouldn't have covered the Holocaust, but which got me wanting to learn more about the war.
Anyway, by the time I was a young adult, I knew plenty about the Holocaust. On my first trip to Europe, when I was 23, one of the stops was Dachau.
Today, knowledge of the Holocaust is apparently not all that widespread among younger Americans.
I guess shouldn't come as a surprise. There's a regular drumbeat of survey results that reveal that plenty of Americans (and not just the young folks) can't locate their state on a map, don't know how our government works (or is supposed to), and can't calculate a tip without using a calculator. They don't know what the Civil War was fought over (or they get it wrong!) - and those are the ones who've at least heard of it, even if they can't place the century it took place in. There are people who aren't sure which came first, World War I or World War II. And there's ample evidence that a significant proportion of our population doesn't have a clue how science works, let alone tariffs.Almost two-thirds of young American adults do not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and more than one in 10 believe Jews caused the Holocaust, a new survey has found, revealing shocking levels of ignorance about the greatest crime of the 20th century.
According to the study of millennial and Gen Z adults aged between 18 and 39, almost half (48%) could not name a single concentration camp or ghetto established during the second world war.
Almost a quarter of respondents (23%) said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, or had been exaggerated, or they weren’t sure. One in eight (12%) said they had definitely not heard, or didn’t think they had heard, about the Holocaust.
More than half (56%) said they had seen Nazi symbols on their social media platforms and/or in their communities, and almost half (49%) had seen Holocaust denial or distortion posts on social media or elsewhere online. (Source: The Guardian)
Anyway, the results of this survey are pretty shocking and disheartening.
Even in a highly educated and enlightened state like Massachusetts, only 35% of millennial and Gen Z-ers had heard of the Holocaust, knew that 6 million Jews were slaughtered during it, and could name a concentration/death camp or ghetto. (We came in third, behind Wisconsin (42%) and Minnesota (37%). Interestingly, unlike Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Minnesota both have very high German-American populations. And if there's one thing the German education system does well is educate its students on the Holocaust. Maybe it's catchy.)
Seven out of 10 said it was not acceptable for an individual to hold neo-Nazi views.
The Holocaust is part of the curriculum in Illinois in eighth grade. In addition to learning about it in social studies class, students read holocaust literature in language arts class. At least they did when I was around. But who knows if they remember learning anything about it.
ReplyDeleteI was pretty sure that your school would have had it covered! There must be such a disparity between states with respect to what kids learn.
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