Are you ever SHOCKED by how butt-ignorant *SOME* young people are?

[1monster]

52. A few years ago a test for graduation from a nineteenth century farming community school was

making the rounds. It asked students to figure how many wagon loads it would take to carry their grain to market if the so many acres of grain had been planted and each acre yielded so many pecks, bushels, etc. Even with our modern maths and calculators, most of us would have failed because they used measurements that we would find difficult to translate into modern measurements.

Today's kids learn maths that didn't even exist when I was in high school. They learn sciences that were barely in the realm of SciFI sixty years ago. And they have to cover History from prehistory to today. They get two years of U.S. history in those thirteen years of school. In sixth grade, they study world history, in seventh, they study world geography, and in eighth they study US history. In high school, they get world history again for one year and US history for one year. They have to study however many more years of history than you did when you were in school.

The amount of time spent on the more recent history is very scant. Lyndon Johnson's period of history is more ancient to them than WWII was to us and, I think the history books give three or four paragraphs to the Vietnam War. The whole eara is given very little time and space.

As for the word sermon: like homily, it is not used much anymore, generally it is only associated with church services. And other words, such as lecture, have taken the place of sermon.

Give the kids a break. Their curriculums are dictated by ignorant politicians who have their own agendas and they have so much more to learn than in the past. Teachers have to cover more ground in less time than you might realize. So our kids only get a thin surface of information that covers a huge area.