August 6

[Patroklos]

YAY!!!

I love the annual atomic bomb debates. It would be as odd as a missed eclipse if it didn't occur.

[Hueij]

Originally posted by Nikolai
But do you guys in the Big Dangerous World(tm) really learn dates in history?

Great post Nikolai You needed only ONE sentence to explain what is wrong with education nowadays. Well done!

[Saras]

History forum, n00bs.

[Q Classic]

But I'll get +1s for posting there!

[Nikolai]

Originally posted by Hueij

Great post Nikolai You needed only ONE sentence to explain what is wrong with education nowadays. Well done!

Was that sarcastic? It's often so difficult to say on the Net. For the record, I am very interested in history, I have always been, and is specializing in history in my current education in university(middle east knowledge). I can more dates and details than most around me, but I still don't think it's the dates that is important. The bigger picture and an understanding of the events in question, is always more important than dates and pure facts. I don't like everything in my country's history education, but I do like that the last reforms have moved in my direction. What I DO NOT like, however, is that with the last reform, the world wars and cold war have been nearly removed. I think that is to go too far. Thankfully I was finished with that part of my education a year before that change.

[Nikolai]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
But I'll get +1s for posting there!

I think you do that in the history forum too.

[Q Classic]

Originally posted by Nikolai


I think you do that in the history forum too.

The "there" wasn't a typo.

(I know I get +1s here, but this place is familiar.)

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Saras
History forum, n00bs.

Down with the history forum and all the other dimunitions through stratification of the once great poly OT!

[Hueij]

Originally posted by Nikolai


Was that sarcastic? It's often so difficult to say on the Net.

Part of it was sarcastic, part of it wasn't.

A study that was performed here a couple of years ago showed that almost half of all highschool kids didn't know when WW2 happened. And most of the young people don't know when we fought our our independence war against Spain, when our Golden Age was, when we were occupied by Napoleonic France.

I think it is important to know that because that is what made us what we are now. And I don't want them to know the exact years, but at least the time frame would be nice so you can put things in perspective.

It's all great being young and during weekends drinking more Breezers than you can handle but there's more than that...

[Kuciwalker]

[Nikolai]

Originally posted by Hueij

Part of it was sarcastic, part of it wasn't.

A study that was performed here a couple of years ago showed that almost half of all highschool kids didn't know when WW2 happened. And most of the young people don't know when we fought our our independence war against Spain, when our Golden Age was, when we were occupied by Napoleonic France.

I think it is important to know that because that is what made us what we are now. And I don't want them to know the exact years, but at least the time frame would be nice so you can put things in perspective.

It's all great being young and during weekends drinking more Breezers than you can handle but there's more than that...

I totally agree. I think it's important to know when things happened, only not by date. Sometimes it's enough to know the year, like when the world wars was. Some times it's enough to know roughly when, like with the Napoleon wars I think it's enough to know that it happened around the start of the 1800s. Some times dates is important, like with national important events like Norway's May 17th 1814 (constitution) or your independence war, or 9/11. But it doesn't help if you know that the first atomic bomb was used August 6th if you do not have any idea what impact it had there and then and, most important, in the years that came.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Nikolai
Some times dates is important, like with national important events like Norway's May 17th 1814 (constitution) or your independence war, or 9/11.

I think it would be hard for people to not know teh date of 9/11.

I guess one could think it was on teh 9th of November.

[Nikolai]

Of course, it's our present history. But I think it will be important for later generations too, important enough to warrant the date to be learned. Another example could be the end of WW1: 11/11-11 11 o'clock.

[Adalbertus]

Originally posted by Nikolai
Of course, it's our present history. But I think it will be important for later generations too, important enough to warrant the date to be learned. Another example could be the end of WW1: 11/11-11 11 o'clock.

Great. War ends, carnival starts. Maybe one should have had carnival earlier.

What is important in history is the order of things, and times processes take. This is helped by learning dates. Dates without understanding of the facts is as useful as learning a phone book by heart. facts without dates will stay quite isolated. Where dates help me a lot is to know in which political/cultural/etc. environment a scientist or composer lived.