College students and their WWII history.
Funny, eh?
Don’t get so conceited.
In 2015, a ceremony in Turkey will mark the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli, in which the Newfoundland Regiment – Newfoundlanders then, not yet Canadians – played a major role holding the Turkish Army at bay, and was almost wiped out.
She’s a recent college student.
Actually, the Newfoundland Regiment was at Gallipoli.
Though it was at Beaumont Hamel that they were almost wiped out.
I just came back from Gallipoli.
Without attempting to minimize the sacrifice of the Blue Puttees, when the Allied landings started, the Turks had relatively few troops there. Their commander, Mustafa Kema (later to become the founder of republican Turkey) was a colonel on the site. He went to one Turkish regiment, the 57th, and told them, “I am not ordering you to fight. I am ordering you to die. In the time that it takes us to die, other forces and commanders can come and take our place.”
The line held until those reinforcements came.
And the 57th Regiment died – to a man.
Gallipoli is a serene place now and the Turks are friendly. It’s much better that way.
having travelled a lot south of the border I know first hand that americans are not well versed in history or geography. They are very friendly but uninformed. I’v also found a fair share of uninformed north of the border, but not quite as bad as “south”
So for all in here ,how many Jews were killed by hitler the jew (or atheist for joe) and which group statistically was the worst off?
Not much makes me angrier than media getting the history of Significant Battles wrong.
The Newfoundlanders lost 50 men at Galipoli.
Sun managed to confuse Beaumont-Hamel, the most Significant Battle in Newfoundland’s history with Galopoli, the most Significant Battle in the ANZACS history.
Galipoli is to the Aussies and Kiwi’s what the Somme was to Newfoundland.
B-H was so devastating to NFLD that it forced them into the vote on Confederation. The country of Canada wouldn’t be what it is without B-H.
That particular battle is the polar opposite of Vimy. One destroyed an island, the other created a country.
I have higher levels of expectation from Sun.
The memorial site is quite impressive even at night with it being all lit up when seen from the deck of a ship.
Ataturk wanted the memorial built as a memory to the dead of both sides. My opinion is that Turkey could use a Kemal Ataturk today.
My primary complaint about the video is the assumption that schools are supposed to teach students certain subjects. I would counter that it is up to students to learn on their own and that if they aren’t doing so then they have pathetically low levels of curiousity. I admit that I’m probably not representative of most students as I was self-schooled skipping most classes in high school (aside from chemistry and physics labs which were fun) and writing programs during the boring classes I did attend.
The primary function of schools, when it comes to teaching history, is to disseminate government propaganda and has been so for years. I remember very biased history classes when I was in high school that at that time were very England-centric and much of WWII history was at variance with what I got from my parents. History textbooks are written by the winners of wars and even in 1970 the history of the US War of Northern Aggression (called the US Civil War back then) taught the lie that the war was all about freeing slaves whereas the war was about states rights and protectionism by northern US manufacturers. It took a lot of reading on my own to get a better grasp of history which is never as simple as superficial high school history courses make it out to be.
If people aren’t learning on their own, then one wonders what they’re doing with their time? The average student, once they learn how to read and write, now has the complete resources of the internet at their disposal with millions of out of print books available free for downloading through which people can educate themselves on historical subjects. Obviously the students in that video weren’t educating themselves about history. Perhaps they never really learned to read very well.
Given that vast increases in information storage take place in human wetware between the ages of 13-20, one wonders what these students do know about? It’s certainly possible that they haven’t utilized their wetware for storing much information as they also seem to be very ignorant about science and mathematics as well and the only uniform ability I’ve found among high school students is being able to type quickly on a small touchscreen keyboard to engage in a seemingly endless exchange of text messages. Now parents seem to have control over their kids by threatening to take away their cell phones. Presumably this same generation is good at playing video games.
“they have pathetically low levels of curiosity”
Maybe.
When I was growing up we had 2 TV channels and no internet.
We had nothing like the information saturation levels/distraction levels that youngsters have today and have had for about 20 years.
If info saturation is the problem, and I think it is, then structured teaching of history in a school setting is absolutely necessary.
“… then they have pathetically low levels of curiousity.”
Amen, Amen, A – effin-men!
Low to the point of non-existent. There is no desire to turn over the metaphorical rock, or to turn the next page in a book just for the sake of finding out what it holds. There is no concept that acquiring ‘extra’ knowledge might be a good thing down the road. Their entire universe has been reduced to a 3-inch screen – with all the snot and drivel it can feed them. They are, in effect, life support systems for parasitic technology.
The Royal Newfoundland Regiment, actually.
Oz notes:
When I was growing up we had 2 TV channels and no internet.
That’s 2 more TV channels I had when I was growing up and 1 more than I currently have although I never turn on the TV. When I was growing up I had to get library books via the mail from a library in Edmonton and it took a week or more.
Earlier today, I decided to look up how to measure air flow from my heating system and in the space of an hour had found several cheap but elegant systems for measuring air flow and also brushed up on quite a bit of fluid dynamics just using a cheap tablet without leaving my house. Have all the equations I need to compute air volume and heat output from my multiple heat vents as I already have temperature sensors in some of the vents. I did get a bit sidetracked with an excursion into fluidic logic and wind speed measurement but the latter will be useful for the weather station I’m slowly building. When I was growing up, getting that information would have required at least 2-3 days at a library or picking the furnace repairman’s brain had he been at my parents house.
With the amount of knowledge out there, one has no excuse for being ignorant. Again, the question arises, what comprises the bulk of information stored in the wetware of these young, surprisingly ignorant, university students?
Truly mind boggling, face-in-palm, dumbfounded ignorance. Sadly not suprising however.
Behold our future leaders of state.
I’ve really found it depends on the what circle of people you associate with. When you travel to the US you’re more likely to strike up conversations with stupid people because they are the people that staff tourist places like restaurants and hotels. You don’t often associate with dumb people in Canada probably. That’s been my experience. Talk up a waitress here sometime or maybe a walmart employee.
This video is no surprise. Having watched the Jay Leno show over the years when he goes out to ask questions on the street about both current and historical events leaves little doubt to the ignorance of many people. I often wondered whether his bits were carefully rigged to give the results he showed but my own experiences have without question proven to me the lack of even general historical knowledge of large numbers of the population. This is specially true of young adults who seem to have increasingly narrow fields of interest. This lack of knowledge of the past and interest in learning of it is only going to increase as the left come to control all instituions of learning and rewrite history to fit their own agendas.
I congratulate this woman and the Federal government for their efforts to give recognition to the past. I attended a presentation by a holocaust survivor a few years ago and it was one of the most moving experiences of my life. By its end I doubt there was anyone in the audience who had not shed a tear or two or who had not hung their head with shame because of the realization that both we and the perpetrators were members of the same race.
What percentage of Canadians do you think could find Afghanistan on a map of the world showing political boundaries but with no names for the countries?
Mark
Ottawa
“…you’re more likely to strike up conversations with stupid people because they are the people that staff tourist places like restaurants and hotels…”
Dead wrong. When it comes to ignorance, there is no necessary connection between occupation and awareness.
As a matter of fact, I’d put money on the probabilities that the vacuous interviewee came from a tony subdivision rather than a ghetto, and her parents were more likely to be white collar instead of red or blue.
james, actually you are about as wrong as you could get on that one. I used to travel as a trouble shoting service tech., and supervise installations, so I delt with millwrights, engineers, plant managers, and such, but also every day ppl. So my exposure was quit varied. And in 5 yrs I probably travelled more than 90% of ppl do in a life time. And here in Canada I’v worked in service industries, so my exposure again was quite extensive. But I do get your point, and agree that it could have had merit.
and yes, I do talk up waitresses and other sevice ppl, some are quite intelligent. One of my friends nieces dated a person with a MBA who worked at timmies, he was told that there were quite a few well educated ppl working at tims and other such establishments:-)))
Well, 2 channels(CBC was one) on one black/white TV.
My present family stopped watching TV in the spring of 2000, I watched the Twin Towers fall on the internet.
But you win whatever you think you win for being more materially poor when you grew up.
“He who controls the past controls the future.
He who controls the present controls the past.
We have always been at war with Eastasia”
~George Orwell 1984
My point, if it was missed, was that history must be taught in school.
It is that important.
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
~George Santayana
Should knowledge of history be left up to mere personal curiosity?
NO. It should be taught in school.
Well, I guess one of my grandsons, who is now in grade 7, has an avid interest in history is the exception. On his third day in grade 1 he asked his teacher when they would start studying history. I give him the copies of Canada’s History, formerly the Beaver, and he reads it from cover to cover. He also reads my Dorchester Review magazine, as well as a number of my Roman history books. Occasionally he phones me and discusses some current events. On one occasion he phoned and asked if I thought the US was going the way Rome did.
Unfortunately he is the rare exception. Many of the teachers today think history began in 1848 and modern history began in October 1917.
Brian Lilley had a guest, Bob Parkes, a US conservative black who has a talk show. Parks sent an interviewer and a cameraman into the streets of Washington to ask who was to blame for the government shutdown. The were given two choices, Bush or Obama, and all except one chose Bush. The future is sad for both our countries with totally uninformed voters such as these.
At least, it wasn’t Fantino who made the stupid statement. Or was it? Hard to tell from the context.
we are expected to compensate everyone for past grievances
Why do we not demand compensation for the families of our soldiers from the warring country?
just thinking
andycanuck “The Royal Newfoundland Regiment, actually.”
On 28 September 1917 to be exact. Before that day, it was The Newfoundland Regiment.
At the age of those interviewed, I probably didn’t know much more than they did. Over time, I have come to pride myself on my knowledge of history. It’s because I find it INTERESTING, not because someone told me to learn it.
And while I’m not anti semitic, I find the woman’s crusade to include knowledge of the holocaust narrow in scope, as to understand the holocaust one would have to truly understand the history of the Jews for the 1,939 years prior to the holocaust. And what about all the other “holocausts”, like in Russia and Cambodia and Sudan. Shouldn’t these all be included? Massacres of entire cities and armies, devastation of countries resulting in mass starvation are just as horrible in my view and have occurred throughout history. The specialness of Jewish history is not so special….. in my view.
And @Loki, I think you might revisit the U.S. Civil War history again. “States Rights”, Yes, Yes. “Protectionism”, NO. “US War of Northern Aggression” … loaded phrase and ridiculous at that. (Last time I checked, Ft Sumpter was still in South Carolina). For many it was about slavery as an institution, for others the spread of slavery into new areas. For still others, including Lincoln, preservation of the Union was a high priority (see Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address). The causes of the U.S. Civil War were multiple and cumulative.
We remember all war dead. Friend or foe. Mother or father. Daughter or son.
It’s the Canadian way… Amen.
Great Big Sea’s Recruiting Sergeant
David in Michigan:
I strongly recommend you read two books on Lincoln by Thomas di Lorenzo. At least one of them.
You will find that Loki is right about the War of Northern Aggression and that history is, as suggested by Henry Ford, BUNK.
There is no better example than the Lincoln fable.
@ Me No Dhimmi: I stand by my statements on the multiple and cumulative causes of the U.S. Civil War. I’ve seen enough “revisionist” historians to know that Mr. di Lorenzo is just one more person hoping to sell a conspiracy theory rather than a serious study. You will,I hope, note that I did NOT say Lincoln promoted the civil war to end slavery but rather to save the Union. Apparently this is the only point that Mr. di Lorenzo and I agree upon although to be sure in Mr. di Lorenzo’s mind this equates to big government federalism.
I don’t understand how they could be of college age and not have absorbed some basic WWII facts. Surely at some point in their 20 years they would have run into a WWII veteran, flipped by a WWII documentary or even watched a hollywood rendition of something that happened during WWII or Memorial Day or even at the very least the Wikipedia article or even talked to someone who brought up the subject.
Yep it is a sad situation that the best means of telling history (it is a story) are not documentaries but rather series like Band of Brothers.
Yeah I know there’s a lotta propaganda there but so there is in Shakespeare’s Henry V.