This probably stems from the fact that many colleges do not require a course in American History in order to graduate; or if they do, just one semester is usually required. We had an enlightening (to me, anyway) discussion about this on CC, and a surprising number of people here don’t think American history needs to be taught in college; primary education on the subject is sufficient; if you can pass the AP AmHistory test, you are good. With the abysmal public school education in many places, the numbers of immigrant students and international students and people who like me who didn’t do all of their primary education in this country, it is no wonder that people lack basic American history knowledge. I’m surprised when people are surprised at this.
@musicprnt, Oftentimes, during discussion about some technical problems with some coworkers, I have a hard time because I am supposed NOT to use any concept or terminologies that I learned from college days. If I am not careful about avoiding these, I run the risk of being labelled as being academic. The word “academic” could be a dirty word: It means you are not practical or even “out if touch”. Thus, a regular expression in the “computer science” context has nothing to do with finite state automata. It has nothing to do with the lexical scanner in a compiler. It has nothing to do with the algebra developed by Stephen Kleene. (Mentioning of Ken Thompson’s “grep” command, which was “outgrown” from his QED editor, is acceptable because that command can be useful and Ken Thomson was accepted as a CS programmer – after all he gave us Unix.) It is only about how to use the functions in the computer language we use on that day. Mentioning anything else is just “a wasting of our time.”
^This is stuff that is supposed to be taught well before the college level. The Bill of Rights and Civil War history doesn’t take college level reasoning. Folks should be looking into the quality of their middle and high school curricula.
@bay:
They kind of assume that history is one of those things you ‘just know’ by being an American. Worse, there is the politics around history, where you have, for example, the Texas school commission trying to force textbook makers to put things into textbooks, like 'the founders were Christian men wanting a Christian nation" or “Slavery was not all that bad for the slaves, many of them preferred it as shown by the thousands of slaves who fought for the Confederacy” and the like,or removing or toning down the sections on the treatment of native Americans, the rounding up of Japanese Americans and the less than stellar things in our history, there are many who would rather not teach history then to write about the downsides of our history.
When my mother was going through school in the dark ages of the 1930’s and 40’s, they used to have something called Civics, where you learned about the election process, you learned about the political system (in Chicago, they probably also taught how much to hold out for to get your vote lol…I couldn’t resist that one, it is my ode to Studs Terkel:), you learned about things like how the constitution was written and why. AP History is a bloody joke, it is US history watered down to “what year was the battle of Gettysburgh, How many rights are in the bill of rights (I saw that I almost puked, because the bill of rights does not contain 10 rights, which was the ‘correct’ answer, the College Board had egg on their face with that one, it has a lot more, given that the first alone is multiple rights, of religion, the press, speech and assembly and the right to redress for grievances), What year did the US enter WWII”, basically facts to be regurgitated.
On the other hand, teaching history is dangerous, because that challenges the myth that has been reconstituted as fact, like “Government spending didn’t end the Great Depression, WWII did” (really? The cost of WWII to the US was 680 billion dollars in 1940’s dollars, which would be in the many trillions of dollars in todays money, talk about economic stimulous!) , or “the founders wanted a majority rule country, the will of the people” (really? They never read anything by John Adams or Madison , that is for sure, or looked at the constitution as written; it was full of ways to stop ‘the common people’, from having a non elected Senate, the electoral college, bicameral legislatures in the states, the way governors rule, the presidential veto, among other things, all are to thwart the ‘will of the people’). Teaching history is dangerous, too, because if done right, it teaches you to think, when you learn history, not as facts, but the actions of people, it causes you to think things like “were they right” or “that reasoning sounds idiotic”, it teaches you history, like anything done by man, is neither black and white, good and bad, nor is it rational or bound by facts, and the writing of history is likewise not that clear, all historians have bias, of one kind or another, the good ones let you know what that is, but otherwise you have to read and analyze. And who wants people to do that, in the world of 30 second ‘factoids’ and blogs full of ‘blogistory’ and so forth.
On the more liberal side of things, a famous book was 'The Economic Interpretation of the Constitution" by Charles Beard around 1900 that argued that the Constitution, rather than being an enlightened document to give rights to the people, was a document guaranteed to maintain the economic power of the well off classes who wrote the document, and it held sway for a pretty long time. It, too, needed to be deconstructed, and as ‘historical truth’ it is about as factual as the religiously stupid with their idea that the constitution was God ordained as the bible was, that the US was “blessed by God” so it could do no wrong and so forth. Beard wasn’t wrong in one sense, those writing the constitution were men of wealth and/or elite status, but his explanation was too simple, among which some of the most influential people in writing it were not that well off, but rather they feared mob rule.
Some of this comes from the ‘practical’ folk, who see anything other than you need to get a job as being “waste” or “frills” (most of what passes for the tea party these days), others it is if people don’t think the swill that comes out of PAC’s on both sides, the 30 second sound bites on CNN or Fox News, the crap spewed on talk radio, becomes ‘the truth’. Goebbels knew this, his statement about if told enough, a lie becomes the truth, is plenty evident in our modern world. With the internet in full force, and with a Media trying to copy the 'flow of blogs and such, when the Bush administration put forward ‘truths’ like Hussein had something to do with 9/11, or that Hussein had WMD’s that threatened the US, it was allowed to go forth as ‘fact’ far longer than it should have, the people in Congress who should have been saying “whoa, show me the facts” went along, the media other than a few relatively obscure outlets like the St. Louis Post-Despatch accepted it, when the BS meter should have been blowing off the scale. You read history and understand it, you know of the power of propoganda, of yellow Journalism, and learn how to spot it (Remember the Maine? The Gulf of Tonkin “incident”) and you see the same signs, and say “whoa”…on the other hand, you have a bunch of sheep used to taking in as ‘fact’ whatever someone chooses to write or day, you got it made.
“.I was commenting on the irrelevancy of keeping up with who the VP is after he/she is elected. There isn’t a mulligan.”
So people vote for a ticket and then can’t remember who they voted for after? I don’t believe that.
I believe people who don’t bother to vote and have no interest in our political process are more likely to not be able to name the VP.
“I’ve just said that his choice of visual aid is irrelevant to the validity of it.”
Not to the people who believe as he does. They think because it was cold and it snowed in Washington there is no such thing as AGW. That is part of their reasoning.
If no one was going to believe he had a valid point he wouldn’t have used that visual.
It is probably more likely that the people who did not vote for the candidate who won, don’t know the name of the VP-elect.
While it’s possible “anti-intellectualism is killing America,” I find it astounding that anyone came to that conclusion from the linked screed.
How many Americas are there? I live in one with a murder rate of 0.9/100000 and almost uniformly good outcomes for its graduates. Which one do you live in?
Intellectually, I’d posit I illustrate a larger problem than anti-intellectualism.
“It is probably more likely that the people who did not vote for the candidate who won, don’t know the name of the VP-elect.”
I find that unlikely, too, but if that is what you choose to believe, ok by me.
I agree with the gist of what you are saying, musicprt, if I don’t agree with every detail. From participating in this website alone, I have concluded that there is a boatload of academic information to be learned, analyzed, argued and contemplated about American history, that can’t possibly by digested in any meaningful way by 8th and 10th graders.
In the 2008 election, my vote was sealed by the VP candidates. It may not be common for the VP to tip the balance one way or the other, but it happens!
I don’t doubt it happens. It is quite plausible that people like both Presidential candidates, and the VP selection is what sways them one way or another. Or vice-versa.
@fragbot, it is a good sanity check.
We are much better than Russia, much worse than Japan and South Korea, and slightly worse (surprisingly, not better) than China, according to the color of the map in this link. But the homicide rate is not everything (we have more guns owned by common citizens after all. Guns could misfire accidentally like in the SC church case /sarcastic) But we are surely the land of opportunity, aren’t we?!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
@musicprnt, should we take what you write as fact? 
I am very impressed with your posts. I think almost everybody is. If NYU is partially responsible for the way you think, the school might be worth the money.
When you retire from your present career, you might want to look at becoming a professor.
171 - maybe the map is wrong, the data table shows China at 1.0, and US at 4.7, so not just slightly worse.
@dstark:
Some of it is fact, some of it is just my opinion, I try to differentiate it. With history, there is both, and historians are notoriously catty towards one another, playing can you top this, so you have to factor that into this, too. (For example, there was a recent book on WWI, whose main theme seemed to be trying to make earlier works look ‘wrong’, like for example, saying that the timing Barbara Tuchman had in her magnificent “Guns of August” of how certain things happened, was off by like 10 hours…give me a break!). I don’t think NYU made me what I am, with some exceptions, I did have a couple of good history professors there, and got to know some other teachers, to argue with an so forth, and learned how to deal with huge, stupid bureaucracies pretty well, too:). One of the key things in a world of ideas is that people have different ideas, and that is great, and whether right or wrong, as long as they are argued, as long as there is discussion and use some kind of rational analysis and logic in backing up the claim, there is a common point around that logic. Put it this way, I am socially a pretty liberal to libertarian person (and no, I don’t think Rand Paul is a libertarian, he is a libertarian only on certain issues, mostly economic) , fiscally hard to define, and I can and do respect some of the people and arguments from the conservative side of things, those who can actually put an argument together, rather than citing Ayn Rand as economic fact. I was opposed to ideas people like George Will put up, or William F Buckley in their day, but for the most part they thought through their positions, and both hate what I call the ‘idiot right’ the way I do, where belief becomes ‘truth’ or ‘knowledge’, when it is not.
Not sure I would make a good professor, I would care more about teaching kids to think and appreciate what I was teaching (probably history) then trying to publish papers to make the administration happy:). But I appreciate the thought!
I heard being a teacher in some low homicide rate country (Japen, S. Korea) is a more respected job in the society than a teacher in US. Wonder whether this difference has anything to do with “anti intellectual”. in US. Maybe yes, Maybe no. I do know that our child’s late elementary school teacher does not know how to convert a number 3/8 to 0.375, and she did not bother to learn it herself when some of her students said they knew how to do it and could show her how. I heard she spent a lot of time flirting with another young teacher. What a good model for these young kids: flirting is fun but math does not matter.
Teaching in countries like Japan and South Korea is very different than the US, some in good ways, some in not so good ways. I think that teaching is respected in one sense, that the authority of the teacher is a lot stronger there, but I also have heard from people who have taught there that the parents also can put a lot of pressure on teachers, both threats and bribes, to make sure the kids get better grades and such (I have had this confirmed reading articles about both countries). On the down side, because of class size (in Korea, 50 kids in a class is not unknown) and the way the education system works, there is very little leeway for teachers, they are basically teaching to the tests, the tests that decide a students future (if someone wants to see the objections to the common core curricula, the way kids are taught in Korea and Japan would be a good starting point of the fears). No essays, no research papers, most of it is basically learning what will be on the tests, and from what I have heard it is pretty boring to teach that way. Plus teachers are not necessarily that well paid, one of the reasons that bribery and such is commonly done is that the teachers are not necessarily making much. I don’t know how it is in Japan these days, but back in college I had a friend from Japan, and he said most of the teachers were women, a lot of them young, and they didn’t make a lot of money, and I have heard the same thing about teachers in Korea, that they don’t make a lot comparatively, and that teachers tend to end up moving on to more lucrative jobs, either in the private sector, or some of the private schools that actually pay well.
@musicprnt, I understand.
I am socially liberal and I am usually fiscally conservative…but not like the fiscally conservative politician types like we see in Kansas. Lol
Tax cuts for the rich, spending less on the poor, and spending less on education is not fiscally conservative to me. (Because that is not fiscally conservative).
I understand about the rewriting of history. I read rewrites where supposedly the New Deal didn’t work at all, Keynes is an idiot and we should have tried austerity in a depression. 
Reagan never increased taxes. Voodoo economics works.
I was in a book store with a friend. It was Stacey’s Book Store in SF. There was a large wall of investment books. Very cool if you like that sort of thing.
My friend was a successful trader. He said to me, “All these books with different ideas on how to invest, are correct. They are correct for a certain period of time. They aren’t correct always”.
I like that.
I like this too.
Sounds like a professor I would like to have…or my kids or my future grandkids.
"Not sure I would make a good professor, I would care more about teaching kids to think and appreciate what I was teaching (probably history) then trying to publish papers to make the administration happy:). But I appreciate the thought! "
If publishing papers (and research, no doubt), is the main priority of an administration, that is a sad commentary. That’s not what we are paying huge sums of money for, when our kids go to college. That’s not what parents and students go into debt for, sometimes for decades. Apparently some of the administrators have forgotten whom the customer is, and what their purpose was, in the first place.
Right, but that considerable drop didn’t occur all by itself. It’s the result of the relentless pressure over the last 35 years to cut government spending. And it proves the old saying: Be careful what you wish for.