October 4, 2007

  • SPAIN!?!?!?

    A recent valedictorian - the youngest contestant so far on "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader" - didn't know that England fought France in the Hundred Years' War?  

    I'm dumbfounded.

    e-thud

Comments (8)

  • The Hundred Years' War, nor anything else that happened between 476 and 1492 wasn't taught in my school 25 years ago when I graduated. Everyone knows about the Spanish Armada, though, and "all that Middle Ages stuff runs together."

    Which is why I spend a whole year on the Dark Ages, Middles Ages and Renaissance (a year total) with my kids. Simply by virtue of understanding that the world wasn't shrouded in indistinct fog for 1000 years with knights running around doing...um....something means my kids have a better grasp of ALL of history than most people -- even those who apply themselves in most schools.

  • <<<>>>

  • I meant to indicate.... embarrassed silence. It didn't work.

  • Maybe I learned it because I attended a Catholic high school, then?

    Though, no, Don knew it instantly too. I'd think maybe I knew it because of being an English history major in college, only Don didn't specialize in that area. He majored in history, IIRC, but he didn't concentrate on British history as I did.

    Presumably since this was a 4th grade question, it IS being taught nowadays, and this contestant just graduated from high school.

    To us that was one of the simplest questions asked of her (with the MOST simple having to be what animal body the Sphinx has, which she also had to think about), and both Don and I stared aghast at the television as she hemmed and hawed about what a very hard question it was.

  • You're kidding, Eleanor! You didn't know it, either?

    Well, huh. Obviously this isn't as widespread a bit of knowledge as I thought it was.

  • Maybe it's taught, but not meaningfully?

    I mean, I might have heard somewhere in the course of 12 years that the Hundred Years' War was between England and France, but maybe only as part of a list of "important historical facts about England, before we move on to Columbus" or something like that. So it would appear among the list of "things fourth graders are taught," but wouldn't be taught in a way that would make the kids remember it, such as giving them a good understanding of the strong ties and indefinite distinction between England and France after 1066, due to the English actually being ruled by titular French nobles, and how the end of the Hundred Years' War finally made the distinction complete and irrevocable due to the complete breaking of any English royal power in France, etc. If you actually learn ABOUT the war, you'll remember who fought it. If you're just taught it as a fact to remember the test, it probably goes out of the brain within a year or two, unless you're the type who gloms onto and retains historical knowledge, as some of us are.

  • Ummm ...  I wouldn't have known either, but prob. would have guessed right.   Some tests I passed just by being a good guesser.

  • I had to write a 5 page report on the Hundred Years War when I was in 7th grade. I remember having dozens of notes on a stack of grubby 3x5 cards, reading endless reference books on the progression of the war and why it lasted 100 years. At 13, the idea of a war lasting that long was almost impossible to get my brain around.

    I got an A.

    And I would have gotten this correct.

    I'm 48 and I was still, obviously, required to learn such things in a way that made an impact. Whizzing through the facts can't sink into most brains.

    me<><

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