Tue 27 Nov 2007
It may help to think of it as the time when desert camo became popular.
Posted by Chris Griswold under Uncategorized
[9] Comments
Public Relations Class, Chatham University.
A group of women are debating what to name their presentation for Becoming Mommy, a maternity business:
Teacher: So, let’s think of something cutesy for the title name of the presentation.
Girl #1: [blushing and laughing] Um..How about “Operation Desert Stork?”
Girl #2: [serious] I don’t get it.
Girl #1: It’s a play on words. You know, from Operation Desert Storm.
Girl #2: I still don’t get it. What is that?
[Long silence, during which all students glance at each other uncomfortably]
Girl #3: It was part of our first invasions in the Middle East in the early `90s.
Girl #2: Oh… whatever.
girl #2 is obviously a shining example of how well the ‘no child left behind’ bill is successful.
recent or current events are (sadly) rarely taught in history classes in highschool. i think shes a bit too young to have been through it herself and remember the events. so, though i’m quick to trash ‘no child left behind’, i think this is an unrelated problem. also, shes far too old to have been affected by ‘no child left behind’ anyhow.
i do wish ‘current and modern events’ was part of the highschool cirriculum more frequently though. it might educate people about why the middle east is in turmoil, and why we’re always meddling — and then, maybe those educated people could make educated votes. and then maybe our government wouldn’t suck. :)
this past summer i took a course called Politics & Film. we watched Three Kings and Hotel Rwanda…before that, i had known nothing about the first Gulf War or the Rwandan genocide. those events occurred during my childhood and even my 8th grade history class which covered September 11, 2001, didn’t talk about them.
on another note, what does maternity have to do with the Gulf War? aside from “stork” i see no connection.
I go to Chatham.
I’d like to say I’m outraged and offended but that’s how a lot of the students are when it comes to current events. I’ve got a second major in political science and even most of them are oblivious to the world around them except for a few select issues that seem to be popular for the sake of being popular.
In Chatham’s defense, students like Girl #2 make it so the smarter students have very little competition and greater access to opportunities that may not be afforded to them elsewhere because at those schools ALL of the interested applicants are amazing. This matter of probability is part of why I transferred to Chatham from a more competitive school.
Sidebar to say that Three Kings is an AWESOME movie. It was interesting to rewatch it about a year ago and see how history is literally repeating itself.
I have a sixth grader and tenth grader. With what is going on in pgh education today this overheard is very telling. I bet if you go to Schenley and polled the kids the greater majority would know about Desert Storm. They seem to have an ethnic diversity lacking in other PPS schools and this leads to different layers of knowledge. We do not know the details on what is preventing the ratification of a teachers’ contract. Could being trapped in dictated curriculum be one thing? We’d better start covering a lot more than the ancient past. I am sure if I know the name Columbus I know as much as I need to know. Unless the French and Indian War is influencing foreign policy today I know as much as I need to know. Ydayadayada. Do you get it?
I love history and recently started to educate a high-schooler I know about things like the Chicago 7, the Yippie movement, the Black Panthers, and other stuff that the government would like to skip over.
She’s in the middle of the N.C.L.B. mess and though I wish they were not leaving any kids behind I REALLY wish they’d also not leave so much information behind.
It seems to me that no matter how old the history is – if they don’t want kids to learn it (can anyone say Thomas Paine?) they won’t teach it.
The “dictated curriculum” is the problem – deegazette is right about that however I think that the F.I. War is just as important – though the kids don’t get taught the important stuff from that time either.
If you haven’t seen the movie ‘Idiocracy’, watch it. It is a dumb movie, but the general idea is pretty much where we *are* going. This is why my wife and I are not having children. We can’t fix what’s wrong and we don’t want our kids to grow up stupid and without proper education about the world around them. The sad thing is that if we really want to have kids- and this is a viable plan- we’ll just move to Europe where there are no such concerns… or Canada, eh?
Or enroll them in private school, or hell, maybe supplement their education with your own teachings at home? Or move to a better school district.