Orson Scott Card, as he so often does, says it better than I can:
In America we’re all voters — but nobody checks to make sure we have any sense at all about how we vote. I urge every American to regard history as the first and most important study of our lives — the minimum requirement to be a good citizen.
And instead of relying on our castrated and/or politicized textbooks (by Left and Right), which grossly under- and mis-educate our young, we should be reading independent histories every chance we get.
As I have often said–heck, it was long in my blog header–
“In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”-third world county’s corollary to Santayana’s Axiom
They (you know who “they” are) would just whine that it’s racist to require any form of literacy, historic, civic, functional, or otherwise.
Indeed, Perri. It’s as though “they” expect those they designate as favored races to be illiterate.
I can’t believe we ares still ranting after all these years David..sure hope it does some good my friend:)
Helps my blood pressure, if nothing else. 😉
Seriously, though! Wouldn’t it be great if you had to show a passing grade transcript on required history classes before being given a voter registration card? I would be happy to take the required classes even if I didn’t need them.
Sure they would, but so what? “they” will be whining about one thing or another, anyway. Always.
Seems your “reply to this comment” isn’t working correctly, since I replied to Perri’s comment and it showed up at the bottom of the list.
Yeh, Mel, it’s not working properly and… I’m just too tired to mess with it. I do’t usually even see comments on the post pages since I “reply to comment” in my dashboard, so I’d not even noticed. Bad, bad blog owner. *heh*