Charles Self (in
) said:

| Maybe. I've seen too many history teachers, and English teachers,
| who don't know enough about their subjects to teach anything.

I was lucky - I had good teachers. My kids' history teachers didn't
even bother to give their classes a clue as to /why/ history was
taught in school. I recalled George Santayana's famous quote ("Those
who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.") and we began
working our way backward from what was being reported on the evening
news - a game to identify historical precedent for current events.

I found it interesting that their history grades improved - and that
they concluded that most politicians seemed to lack either integrity
or proper education (or both). Darned if I don't agree.

The real eye-opener came some years later when I discovered that my
(then) Soviet Russian ESL students (all engineers) knew more of
American history than we even attempt to teach in our schools...

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html