Nicholle (love her) is talking about the "cold war." I would bet people under 40 have no idea what that was even all

[Evolve Dammit]

about, unless taught by great teachers and folks like us who know exactly what the threats were and the stakes were high. Like now.

[eShirl]

1. This "American Autocracy" series on her show right now is scaring me.

Cold War kid here, too, btw. You're right.

[Evolve Dammit]

6. It is damn scary. Hitler-esque.

[hlthe2b]

2. Why the hell not (rhetorical)? I learned ancient (global) history, knew more about the War of 1812,

Revolutionary War (of course)), US-Mexico War, Korean War, Spanish-American War, Vietnam War (or course), detailed history of WWI and WWII and at least SOME formal (albeit incomplete) understanding of the Indian Wars. And of course the Gulf Wars. And that included the history of the times in between and following that influenced (e.g., Cold War)

Why is it so acceptable that so many of the most recent generations have learned exactly NOTHING of history? This is appalling.

[Aristus]

3. I was very, very fortunate to have a brilliant, thoughtful history teacher in 7th Grade.

This has less to do with the Cold War than the Iran hostage crisis, but the brilliance remains.

When the rest of the country was screaming for us to nuke Iran, or send in the Marines, or otherwise reduce this ancient, beautiful, and remarkable nation to rubble, my history teacher took a different tack.

One day in class, he showed us a short film about a young Iranian boy who wanted to restore an ancient mosque located in a remote town. The mosque had once been crowned with a dome decorated with beautiful blue tiles, but was now bare brick. The film followed the boy's efforts to re-discover the methods for making and glazing the tiles, and then re-decorating the dome of the mosque.

It was a gentle, serene, beautiful documentary about a people the rest of our country was hoping to kill. It really changed my perspective about Iran. I've always been thankful for that teacher, and his different way of looking at things.

[Evolve Dammit]

7. Absolutely appalling. We were fortunate to learn much. Can you imagine red states "edumication."?

[edisdead]

10. I knew nothing about the tulsa massacre

It isn’t the kids to blame but the generation that teaches them.

[Evolve Dammit]

14. I didn't either. And many other deadly, racist "incidents."

[bdamomma]

11. Because

they want these young people to remain ignorant of historic events. Sad, those who don't know the past are deemed to repeat it.

[Basic LA]

4. Had a youngin ask doubtfully

If the Soviet Union was really ever a serious threat! Yes, see Sputnik, Hungary, hydrogen bomb, space race, Army McCarthy hearings, etc!

[Evolve Dammit]

8. 45 and GOP/Putin are counting on re-writing history. Bush/Cheney did same. "We create our own reality."

"Unitary Executive" ,"Deficits Don't matter". It paved the way for today.

[SoFlaBro]

13. They can't relate because they didn't live through it. "The Day After" mortified

[brush]

5. Yes, and the street interviews with those people, and I have to say it...

they were all white, and siding with Russia against Ukraine, saying Russia is not our enemy.

What's up with them? It's like none of them have ever had a history class of the 20th Century? None of them seem to know of Stalin, Khruschev, Brezhnev, the fucking iron curtain, the arms race and the ICBM threat.

So many uninformed people out there with little knowledge, siding with their "tribe," our main enemy and wanting an authoritarian government.

R

[Evolve Dammit]

9. sad

[Evolve Dammit]

15. With the recent SCOTUS actions, I am quite fearful that the voters won't know 45's trangressions

[eppur_se_muova]

12. We teach better our history from 100 years ago than from the recent past.

To many of us, the downfall of the Soviet Union, the downfall of Gorbachev and the ascension of Yeltsin, then his replacement by Putin, are easy to think of as "current events", not history. They don't get taught very thoroughly in school because "everyone was there" or "it just happened" or "it's news, not history". Our own recent history is so divisive that teachers and administrators are reluctant to have any detailed discussions of matters that inevitably involve partisan politics -- the political parties involved are the parties to which students' parents belong, and the parents won't tolerate what they perceive as "partisan" or "biased" history lessons. So most high school history books end at about 40-50 years before the present.

Just think how controversial any coverage of the Reagan years would be and you can see why educators mostly avoid it.

Without such education, younger Americans won't realize just how radically different today's GOP is from any political party in our past history -- including even Nixon's GOP.

[MineralMan]

16. If They Google Cold War,

the Wikipedia article that shows up as the first search result explains it very nicely.

People under 40 use Google all the time. You're too pessimistic.

[Evolve Dammit]

17. and you have your head in the sand. Many are not using any means of informing themselves.