It’s too bad history isn’t taught anymore in our schools. It was something I was pretty good at and enjoyed learning about, be it “American” or “World” history. And I always found it weird that we studied them in two different school years as if each were not a subset of the other, much like new AND improved should really be new OR improved.
I’m not sure when history as a separate discipline disappeared. I imagine like so much else I’ve followed in the Land of the Round Doorknobs for almost the last quarter of a century since returning, it was so gradual as to be almost invisible. And, of course, very quiet. Dignity at all costs.
We now do a lot of multi-discipline style learning incorporating various subjects together, each one complementing and completing one another in a lesson plan (at least) so as to make a right hash of the whole experience in the classroom and producing young citizens who not only can’t write but can’t read or count.
How much thinking they can do is a matter of mean-spirited speculation as well but I suspect that’s often seen as a benefit by some. The graduates do, however, feel very good about themselves and that is what’s important say the people who claim expertise in these matters.
We are already and exactly half-way through 2016. The same 2016 we welcomed with rapturous cries and open arms in the dark days as December became January and Mourning Becomes Electra. And now? We’re kvetching about a summer which has just started. It often has too much or not enough rain, sun and other atmospheric embellishments and accoutrements, blah, blah, blah.
And just as we get the hang of it and learn to take the sting out of the sunburn we all get, it’ll be over and autumn leaves will be falling, the shop windows will have a Halloween Witch thumb-wrestling with a Pilgrim for a peek at what’s in Santa’s sleigh and we’ll be bum’s rushing poor old 2016 and making room for whatever’s next as we go round and round….
-bill kenny
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