Rant the First

[vaznetti]

Ironically, ever since I did that rant meme, I've come up with real life subjects for ranting--my colleagues, the weather, static electricity, regular electricity, the university, the universe... well, you can see where this is going.

Anyway, se_parsons wanted to know what's wrong with kids today, and specifically, with my students.

Comments

[cschick]

It's not just English.

About a year ago, I was chattering on about something history-related to the male half and started discussing the schism between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, the effects that had on future developments throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia Minor . . . and received an increasing blank stare in return. This was unusual, because he's pretty well-versed in both later and earlier history (later: after the Reformation; earlier: prior to A.D. 500). He didn't have a clue about many of the historical events I was referring to.

This lead to us pulling out a European history book and many hours later concluding that anything relating to the Roman Catholic Church AND Islam had been carefully removed from his public school history education, to the point where the realization that historical periods like the Renaissance took place under the eyes and influence of the RCC had never occurred (and really, been carefully obscured). He knew so much about later and earlier history because they'd spent more time studying those periods in depth to avoid studying most of the period between 500 and ~1700 (although, later history from a strongly conservative Christian viewpoint, so sometimes his take on a particular historical event is very different from mine).

He grew up in a strongly Southern Baptist area in the U.S., and attended his state's specialty high school for academically gifted students.