Almost A Century Of Reagan
The last man to win the presidency by capturing 49 states would have turned 99 today. The anti-Reagan movement has tossed and turned over the past two decades, but it’s quite okay to call the 40th president what he was: Super Awesome.
Here’s a small dose from a healthy batch of the kind of medicine America could use these days. The first clip is taken from his farewell address of January 1989. The second shortie comes from an old-fashioned press conference when reporters challenged political leaders.
History Haters In The House
There’s a lot of reasons certain people hate history. Those reasons usually have something to do with stupid teachers who could bore children at a birthday party. Apparently some of these brainless yahoos are in charge of educating the youth of North Caroli
na.
Some Tar Heel State educators don’t think much of George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson or any other historical figures before 1877. According to proposed curriculum changes, teenagers shouldn’t have to bother with trivial little events from the past like the American Revolution or the Civil War or like, you know, irrelevant stuff like that.
In other news, the North
Carolina Department of Public Instruction is apparently hiring idiots just in case you are in the job market, completely clueless, and eager to contribute to another bloated government agency that uses tax dollars to issue moronic and dangerous initiatives.
In a nutshell, the idea is to teach high school juniors and seniors American history from 1877 on. Instead of getting the story before that time period, freshman would take a global studies course, ostensibly to learn about the environment and what makes polar bears cry. I guess this plan will remove the challenges of explaining slavery and the war it caused; although, good luck explaining every Founding Father reference Martin Luther King Jr. ever made. Does this make LBJ the new Abraham Lincoln? Yuck. My fingers just threw up in their mouth a little.
The goal of this flubtubbery* is to help students learn about recent history in greater depth. And to think, for years I’ve been explaining to students how impossible it is to understand our current world without the proper context of the past.
***
Don’t just take my word for it. Listen to what Rebecca Garland, chief executive officer for the aforem
entioned N.C. Dept. of Public Instruction, has to say. She’s left plenty of slack here to strangle her own logic. You’ll have to pardon my interruptions.
“We are certainly not trying to go away from American history,” she began in a recent interview. TRANSLATION: We are trying to go away from American history.
“What we are trying to do is figure out a way to teach it where students are connected to it…” TRANSLATION: The reason teachers (oh, I’m sorry, educators) like me are boring is because we are so bored. REALITY: Why don’t these people call me? I’ll gladly charge the government exorbitant consulting fees to teach teachers how to impact students. It’s a wild strategy I’ve developed called teaching the freaking American Revolution through the eyes of people who were actually there! One recent problem has been using guesswork texts from modern blowhards who write boring and self-serving books about history. They are boring, not Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin. Read more »
Life. Culture. Education.
Life as Pop Culture Professor Clay Morgan
In The Matrix, Morpheus tells Neo he can take the blue pill and go on believing whatever he wants to believe. Or he can take the red pill to stay in Wonderland and find out how deep the rabbit hole goes.
This is a red pill type site that provides information in an entertaining way. It’s about clear thinking and good writing. It’s about finding meaning amidst the absurd. It’s about humor and truth.
I’m a writer / speaker who teaches history and political courses at a couple of local colleges. Where is local, you say? Well, that would be Wonderland of course.
On topics ranging from pop culture to the meaning of life, my brain’s always poppin’. Take the red pill and unplug.
