Run, Sarah, run!

Before it gets closed, let me post this one interesting section of an article I found this morning:

The alarm bell has been ringing for years. Consider "Losing America’s Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century," a 2000 study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a Washington-based advocacy group. Researchers found that the majority of seniors at the nation’s best colleges could not identify the words of the Gettysburg Address or explain the significance of Valley Forge. They did not know, the study concluded, because they had not been taught. History, the study said, was no longer a requirement in the nation’s top schools.

And then, there is a 2006 assessment by the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics, often called The Nation’s Report Card. It found that nearly 40 percent of 12th graders could not identify the purpose of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and only 14 percent could identify and explain a factor leading to U.S. involvement in the Korean War.

Some may think that failure insignificant. History is but the dust of yesteryear, is it not? It is just rote memorization of names and dates and something about the Smoot-Hawley Act. If kids are bored by that, who can blame them? And who cares?

We all should. No child should be able to finish public school, much less college, without a firm grasp of American history. Because history is not dust. Nor is it myths we tell to comfort and acquit ourselves. Nor is it a lever we twist in order to gain political advantage. No, our history is the master narrative of who we are.

It is a narrative of slaves and soldiers, inventors and investors, demagogues and visionaries, of homicide, fratricide and genocide, of truths held self-evident and of government of the people, by the people and for the people. It is a narrative of Europeans leaving Europe yearning to breathe free and the children of slaves leaving the South yearning for the same. It is a narrative of blood on French beaches and a man on the moon.

And we allow all that to be forgotten at our own peril. How can our children write the next chapter of a story they don’t even know?

So, while it is comforting to think Palin’s gaffe speaks only to her own considerable limitations, it is also short-sighted. The evidence suggests that she is less an exception to, than a reflection of, a nation that is in the process of forgetting itself.

Goto:

Commentary: Like Sarah Palin, many of us don't know U.S. history | McClatchy

 

No he is far sighted, you are forgetting the new democratic state of yuma AZ.

 

Well he certainly mis-spoke on the number of "states", but perhaps he was simply not making the proper distinction between states and territories administered by the US.

If those are included their are 57 major areas inside of the American sphere of influence and administration not counting the District of Columbia. I refer to Puerto Rico, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, the US Virgin Islands, Wake Island, Midway Island and American Samoa, which like it or not are "American" (after a fashion) although they don't have voting representatives in Congress.

He certainly wasn’t clear enough in that reference but that isn’t re-writing history, just not being absolutely clear in the message, and for that I'm a bit more forgiving.

 

Clint on this one you're reaching for straws. He said he'd visited 57 but his staff hadn't allowed him to visit Alaska or Hawaii, 57+2=59. Plus I really doubt he had visited Midway or Wake, and probably not Guam.

 

This may say a little about her. Interested in the finer points I'm sure will be made in the near future regarding her 5ft tall stack of emails . Cost of printing 745$ ?
Sarah Palin e-mails released today - Yahoo! News