Yesterday's post had an asterisk. If you searched for it and came up empty, I'm sorry. This is what I meant to add, with a little more verbiage than originally planned.
*****
College Bowl was one of my favorite shows growing up. Three teams from three different colleges answered questions posed by a moderator. There was a high school version, too; our school was a contestant one year.
I don't remember the questions falling to one side or the other of Too Hard/Too Easy. I certainly don't remember them being this easy:
Arrange these men in the order in which they served:
The 20 somethings were flummoxed. I laughed. Those were very familiar faces. When I asked him, he admitted to taking a moment to get Ike and Harry in the right order, but he agreed that this was not a difficult question for a college student to answer.
I pondered what they're not teaching you in school these days for a while, and then I wondered if I could answer the question were it posed to me in the same historical context within which the current contestants were operating.
I went back 50 years from my birth, because that's how far back those pictures are for today's college kids. Take a look below and see if you can do any better.
You've made a good point.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I'm always surprised at what has fallen out of my memory bank.
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Not sure who's between Teddy and Harry, but pretty sure (Taft?) was before Teddy.
ReplyDeleteIt's McKinley, and he was before TR.
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I did not recognize the second so had to image search. Good point!
ReplyDeleteI did, too!
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Yes, it's not about what we are teaching so much any more as it is can you quickly locate information. Memorizing has been replaced with computer keyboards. I am OK with that. but we really do need to teach civics and citizenship.
ReplyDeleteFacts are important and I do think we need to put some of them into the students' heads. Finding them on line without context makes me nervous - Big Cuter decided that the aliens created the pyramids, and wrote 6 pages about it in 6th grade, having done internet research.
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I'm visiting Little Cuter and didn't change the name I signed into Blogger with. These Jenny P comments are really from a/b
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