There is something wrong with our education system...especially the whole college thing (far to expensive).

There are a lot of students that get excited when a history class gets to war because (and I quote) "war is cool!"....yep....but they cant name even the YEAR WW2 started or even the major belligerents. In short, they know very very little of any of the historical wars. The thing is, curriculums today do not leave enough time to discuss these world altering wars. They leave enough time to cover Martin Luther King Jr for a week...but covering a war that started the Cold War, killed 60million+, devastated several countries, hosted multiple genocides, was a clash of political ideals, advanced technology faster than anyother single event, and turned the US into a super power....nope, WW2 is no where near as important. Heck history classes talk about the hippies more than all of the major historical conflicts together!

Hopefully that does not happen to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars...if it does, there will be hell to pay! 

I should mention my views on the grade school system are heavily skewed:
Spent most of my grade school in a rat hole of a school that was a cross between a ghetto and hick-ville...plus 2 administrators screwing around with the cheerleaders, 5+ faculty members arrested for some sexual offense, and the idiot that called in the bomb threat DID IT FROM THE LOBBY PAY PHONES OUTSIDE THE OFFICE ON A HALF DAY before the LAST CLASS with the intention of "getting out early"...yep, real winner of a school 
Orchard View Public School: they got some new faculty, admins, and a new building after I left

Ironic that we have to harp back to films that are 60 years old. Between the UK and the USA we could choose from;

1945-1946 War in Vietnam
1945-1949 Indonesian National Revolution
1946-1954 First Indochina War
1946-1949 Greek Civil War
1948-1960 Malayan Emergency
1952-1960 Mau Mau Uprising
1953-1975 Laotian Civil War
1954-1959 Jebel Akhdar War
1955-1975 Vietnam War
1956-1956 Suez Crisis
1962-1966 Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation
1962-1976 Dhofar Rebellion
1965-1965 Dominican Civil War
1965-1966 United States occupation of the Dominican
1967-1975 Cambodian Civil War
1975-2002 Angolan Civil War
1979-1989 Soviet war in Afghanistan taking the side of the Taliban
1982-1982 Falklands War
1983-1983 Invasion of Grenada
1989-1990 Invasion of Panama
1990-1991 Persian Gulf war
2003-Present Persian Gulf war Mk2
2001-Present Afghanistan

Matt

Over the weekend my son and I watched the original version of the movie Red Dawn, about a Soviet-Cuban-Nicaraguan invasion of the United States, a Cold War version of World War 3. One of most memorable scenes to me is when a downed Air Force pilot is explaining to young resistance fighters what might have caused the war to begin.

Military action should not be mistaken for war.  The United States has declared war only 5 times in its history.

War of 1812
Mexican-American War
Spanish-American War
World War I
World War II

The Korean War was a civil war.

The United States wasn't officially a party.  It send military forces under the United Nations back when people thought the UN could actually do something and it wasn't openly hostile to western democracies.

This of course has no relation to a series of films produced between 1942-1945.

War is merely the continuation of policy by other means.

People die in wars.

Why didn't I just put this in Movies and Entertainment?

Classic series from the director of "It's A Wonderful Life" examines America's reluctant entry into World War II.

Webb wrote on Sep 16^th, 2012 at 11:04pm:


Nope nothing wrong with our educational system. We just don't care much for propaganda movies...

Quote:

If the Dutch had seen this Anne Frank might have survived.

If you haven’t seen these there is something wrong with your education system.

The World at War

Quote:


I try to steer clear of American propaganda. I find some Axis ones are more truthful.

Webb wrote on Sep 28^th, 2012 at 12:37am:


How?

Webb wrote on Sep 28^th, 2012 at 12:59am:


I don't know where you find your history but the Netherlands did put up a fight before capitulating & forming a Government in exile.

the Battle of the Netherlands

The main problem was that the Dutch Army was Ill-Equipped & Ill-Trained.

Also those films weren't produced until 1942 & the Invasion of the Low Countries was in 1940.

Webb, I suggest you go back to school, take some history lessons instead of watching US propaganda movies. We did put up a fight against the Nazi invasion. Problem was that the Dutch Army was indeed badly equipped and trained. Because of the fact that we stayed neutral in WWI, we still had a fighting force on the level of before WWI. Although they fought bravely and hard for 5 days, they couldn't begin a thing against the overwhelming German troops. Outnumbered 10 to 1 even the US Army would have given up.

During the war, there was a huge resistance movement against the Nazis. Bombings, sabotage and killings were a daily business for them. Although there also were a lot of people supporting the Germans. They all got their share after the war. Even now, people don't want to confess that their (grand)parents were in support of the Nazis.

Anne Frank. It's unfortunate that she died. Remember that during the war no one knew who Anne Frank was. She only got famous after the publishing of her dairy. In the 1950's....

So before you start talking nonsense again, go take some lessons in history, instead of believing everything in movies...

I still have to agree that the public education system in the US is a wee bit broken. I graduated from a public highschool in '08 after moving about a couple of times all the while attending PUBLIC schools. I can say all are screwed up: both the well funded ones and the lets just say 'poor' ones....nevermind how they treat special needs children!
My in-laws had to listen to several school officials tell them that their adopted daughter was not bi-polar....even though police have been involved far to many times.

andy190 wrote on Sep 28^th, 2012 at 2:47am:


In the big scheme of things, the polite, but not extended resistance of the Dutch (brought to an end partly by the obliteration of Rotterdam), and then the subsequent Battle of France and Dunkirk evacuation did us a huge favour.

Had they not ended when they did and with the results they did, we'd have been left fighting a war of attrition in the same place as the Great War, with a probable German victory before any  official US involvement. We'd have eventually been stuffed, and had very little (if anything) left to defend an invasion of the British isles, and the consequent ending of any meaningful military resistance in Europe to the Third Reich.

Strategic Retreat wrote on Oct 1^st, 2012 at 6:25am:


I didn't say it would have been a two way war of attrition. We (the allies) would have been, bombed, panzered and overrun by the end of 1940 at the latest. We'd have lost. Comprehensively.

Strategic Retreat wrote on Oct 3^rd, 2012 at 9:37am:


Apologies for my poor use of the English language.

Now I must go and split some hairs...