Tuesday, July 13, 2021

The Asterisk

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.











9 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks! I'm always surprised at what has fallen out of my memory bank.
      a/b

      Delete
  2. Not sure who's between Teddy and Harry, but pretty sure (Taft?) was before Teddy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I did not recognize the second so had to image search. Good point!

    ReplyDelete
  4. 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.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Facts 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.
      a/b

      Delete
  5. 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

    ReplyDelete

Talk back to me! Word Verification is gone!