Today was supposed to be the best chasing conditions in several weeks, given a surface low crossing Virginia and plenty of wind shear, moisture, and a frontal approach. So what happened? Overcast from an earlier mesoscale convective system (MCS) blot…
I left this as a comment on Google +, but it got long enough to become a blog post on its on, so I’m sharing it here too. The article linked below is a middle school teacher thinking out loud about how we teach history in the US. It’s mostly about the wars, and the […]
More and more craft brewers are opting to package their beers in cans. Thankfully, the stigma associated with canned beers is being dismissed as educated drinkers come to understand the benefits. Cans are lighter and easier to carry, and they don’t bre…
I left this as a comment on Google +, but it got long enough to become a blog post on its on, so I’m sharing it here too. The article linked below is a middle school teacher thinking out loud about how we teach history in the US. It’s mostly about the wars, and the greater good that results from America’s forays into war. He is questioning whether or not we are doing it right.
My son used to want to be a Marine, until he started studying history (mostly wars) in depth. He quickly realized that there is nothing glorious about war. I don’t know how anybody could read The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock by Frank O’Reilly, with its horrifying first person accounts of the carnage on the battlefield, and come out the other side of that book anything but anti-war. Really, any first person account of infantry level war that I’ve ever read has been absolutely, mind-numbingly, horrifying. With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by E.B. Sledge is a another one that is so distressing and horrifying I can’t imagine how anybody endured it and survived sane.
I don’t think structuring history around the wars is bad, for better or worse, wars are cataclysmic events that often have a huge impact on history. But instead of just teaching the 20,000 foot view of who did what and why, and who won, we should dig into the personal side of war. It’s ugly, and it’ll turn the whole class into pacifists 🙂
If I was conspiracy minded, I might suggest that the school planners are very aware of this, which is why the history of wars is taught at such an impersonal level. A generation of pacifists is not what the government wants out of the school system.
The Smart Set: Classroom Wars – July 27, 2011.
And since I went there with the title of this post, enjoy some Edwin Starr.
There will be a test of the University’s Area Warning System tomorrow, Wednesday, August 3rd beginnning at 10 AM and going on throughout the day.
The SPC had our area listed under a 5% chance of severe weather Monday August 1st with high winds the main threat. When storms began firing and moving southeast I took notice of a complex northwest of Culpeper and ignored a juicier set of cells traver…
For the first time since I was about 13 years old, I don’t have ESPN on cable. The Red Sox were on last night. I do , however, have ESPN3 vis the Xbox, and the Red Sox game was streaming live. It was sort of a different game watching experience. First of all, the Xbox […]
Before attending the Evening Parade at Marine Barracks Washington, we were in search of dinner and drinks. We knew that the area around the Barracks was home to many restaurants, and we strolled several blocks looking for a place that would entice us i…
Writing these Musings is often cathartic for me, so perhaps putting these complaints “to paper” will be beneficial.
The company I work for is moving into a larger office space. Facilitating that move fell to me. Through the six months of effort, from …
We took a trip to DC this weekend to see the Evening Parade at Marine Barracks Washington. The Barracks, also known as “8th and I”, was established in 1801. It is called the “oldest Post of the Corps.” The Evening Parade consists of appearances by the …
