2016 Postmortem

I'd start by asking him what year it is. And then, what year did 9/11 occur. Next, what year was Obama first elected. And then, assuming he answers those questions correctly, who was President on September 11, 2001.

Of course, chances are, he's extremely vague about all of these details.

It's hard to tell just how old the man with the Trump cap is. But to be a bit fair to him, history is one of the very worst subjects taught in public schools. The other is biology, and they're both taught badly for similar reasons. One is that all too often the football coach is assigned to teach either biology or history, and that poor man, while probably a pretty good coach, never took another history or biology class after he graduated high school himself.

And even if the biology and history teachers are actually certified history or biology teachers, the biology teacher is terrified to teach real biology, evolution for example, for fear the asshole fundamentalists will rise up and try to get him fired, and the history teacher has a text book that is sadly out of date, and even the best history classes are lucky to get to the beginning of the 20th century.

Were I in charge, we'd have non apologetic teachers of biology doing their job. And there'd be a one semester, maybe even only a six week class in modern history, and would cover the most recent 25 years or so. Which means kids would learn (if we're lucky) the events that have most strongly shaped the present.

Alas, I'm not in charge.

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