Meh, its best they forget. Its always easier to mold them into what you want if they dont remember the past.

It was painful to watch. I think I mentioned once before that my American nephew, on telling a school classmate about his relatives in England, was asked what language we speak :o

Another great example of journalistic/intellectual rigor from a conservative medium...:stare:

At the very beginning he explains to his audience who was Erwin Rommel with Wikipedia article, quote and video footage keeping in mind that the viewer may not know who was that WWII General.

Of course, everyone on this forum knows who he was. But what about HIS audience, why did he show all those images from WWII?? or just be honest and show the same images to the students.

Ridiculous :nope:

And that's all there is to this nonsense, really.

There's a lot of this sort of stuff about, the whole "Oh look how stupid X are, they can't even identify Y". It's just made to make one group of people feel superior to another.

I wonder if Trump knows who Rommel was? :lol:

Don't want to start a new debate here, just kidding...

I suppose us older geezers just have to accept that the world has moved on big time, and not to expect youngsters to know the names of such as Rommel. it was extremely disingenuous of the interviewer to refer to him in the present tense and fool them into thinking he was still around.

Journalistic tricks aside, I think it comes down to who you talk to. For example, even of the older post-war generation there will be many who have not heard of Rommel, and many in the younger generation who have. It depends not so much on age but their interests. There are a few young members on this forum and I imagine that they know who Rommel was.

The question is also is it really important to know who Rommel was? I mean seriously why would non Germans (or even today's German) need to know a German Field Marshal from WWII? Why would any young German need to know who Patton or Montgomery were? It's not really important as long as they know who fought who in WWII and for what reason.
And if people think it's important then where do you draw the line? WWI leaders? 30 years war or all the way back to the Roman Empire?
As a matter of fact that stuff is just nice to know but nothing more. If they hadn't known who Hitler, Roosevelt, Churchill or Stalin were now THAT would have shocked me.

One thing to ad to Schroeder.

All this fixation on knowing facts, but as I remember school we werent taught hiw the economy works, how to prepare for a job interwiew, grow my own food, being a cautious consumer when shopping, personal finances and preparing emergency/secondary funds in case the primary income source is shut. Or how to respond if a fammily member falls ill, proper 112 (911) call, keeping a cool head when lost or just something as basic as preparing food.

And then we laugh because people cant remember who Simon Bolivar is, while ourselves cant even check the store fruit from good to one about to expire.

Knowing history is important but knowing all the little details is pointless outside solving crosswords.
Skills should be the focus. An employer doesnt care you can point Eritrea on the map, tax department wont leave you alone over a mistake because you can whistle the entire works of Chopin and knowing Mao Zedongs birthday wont save you when you slip during mountain hikes.

Just saying.

You're forgetting, book smart and common sense are two different things.

I think he isn't forgetting but actually pointing exactly that out.:03:

Yeah, MaDef managed to compress what I said into one sentence.
For an introvert I sure do love to talk a lot :oops: