From across The
Pond there's a wonderful book that came out in the mid-1990s
about how dreadful
the teaching of history is at the secondary school level.
The gap between high school and undergraduate instruction is greater for
history than for any other subject.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies_My_Teacher_Told_Me
Wikipedia opens new possibilities for correcting that problem.
Over here it went something like this:
*When we had our revolution we got help from France.
*Then we bought the Louisiana Purchase from France, which doubled the size
of our country. Gee, thanks.
*Then we had the War of 1812, which didn't really happen in 1812, and we
teamed up with France again.
Somewhere in there was 'Let them eat cake', a guillotine, Napoleon, and
Waterloo. But that was all on another continent and unimportant. As long
as we could be buddies with France whenever necessary, everything went fine.
-Durova
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 9:37 AM, doc <doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
Any decent history book opens the possibility to correct that problem.
The notion that wikipedia is the solution to the problem of American
historical illiteracy beggars belief.