"In 1792 Columbus something something-ed..."

The NY Times tells us that:

"Fewer than half of American teenagers who were asked basic history and literature questions in a phone survey knew when the Civil War was fought, and one in four said Columbus sailed to the New World some time after 1750, not in 1492."

Somehow this is not surprising. I went to a good public high school and while I was lucky enough to have good history teachers (partly because I really liked history and "social studies"-type sybjects), we had a crappy English curriculum (which I liked much, much less-- I don't do boring 19th century sappy English novels), with boring, irrelevent books and insipid worksheets asking you to "discuss the symbolism of the lampposts and doorhandles"-- when your flesh and blood teacher never explained how to 'get' things like symbolism and those other bullshitty things lit people go one about. I'd also like to point out that we had a less-than-ideal writing program-- and I never had to learn to write an actual research paper, partly because my nasty, useless Advanced Composition teacher just gave us stupid worksheets, then criticised us harshly for how we filled them out.

So how to generalise my mixed experience? History is hard to teach, and English lit and writing even more so. And it's even harder to teach kids who aren't interested. I can't imagine being in high school today-- when I was there, the internet was still kind of novel. There was no (get ready for it) Wikipedia (gasp)--- there was no Wiki- anything, come to think of it. There was no facebook or myspace-- and even IMing was a newish thing. We had to gossip on the house landline (oh the horror!!)-- no one had mobiles then. Etc etc etc.

That said, I don't know enough about No Child Left Behind to be able to comment on its role in the shocking ill-knowledge about history and literature. I do know that bumpersticker wags like to say things like 'No School Left Standing'. Maybe I should Wikipedia it....