There are many times I dislike the current education system. Usually because we as a country seem to be content ruining it. My usual gripe is the whole test mentality. We judge the students and the school by test scores. Schools then predominantly try to get their kids study for the test instead of, say, teaching things like critical thinking, common sense and other useful skills but the shit some test maker thought was important. Not to impugn the people who make tests but fuck them. The thing you decide to use as a measurement of success not surprisingly becomes the measure of success. The problem is that with education a real measurement of growth isn’t knowing you should write ‘regardless’ instead of ‘irregardless’ (it’s not a fucking word people). Although that wouldn’t be a terrible place to start.
The thing that pisses me off is that history teachers and social studies teacher bored the living hell out of me. They also taught garbage. Not all of them mind you, but enough to upset me. And this is a tragedy as history is shockingly interesting. And not like the nerdy way of saying ‘hey, you should know this so won’t happen again’ (“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” ~ George Santayana ) and ‘history is cool’ (it is and fuck you for not thinking that) but just learning a few things about history can make you a well-rounded and better person (and chicks dig it).
Let me drop some knowledge on you. You know that whole gentlemanly code thing. Not chivalry to heck with that (although tipping your hat dates back to armed knights removing their visor). I mean being a man about town. When you, present day you, walk with a lady (presuming you are a man, presuming you enjoy the company of ladies carnally and presuming that a lady doesn’t run away from you as long as we are presuming) you end up being on the street side of the sidewalk and lady is on the building side. Odd that this is the way it’s done. Some unknown Jungian thing where we peer into the collective unconscious? Remember when you look into the collective unconscious, the abyss also looks into you or something like that (damn it Nietzsche stop confusing me). No, it has to do with shit. Well, with pails of it splashing into the street from the buildings above but shit nonetheless. See cities and towns didn’t always have this nice thing called a sewer system. Too bad we forgot most everything the Roman’s knew for a few centuries or so. So people would fill their pots and fling the contents into the street. We also didn’t know about this whole germ theory thing but more on that in a moment. So the gents as they sauntered down the street with their intended they would stay nearer the every jostling pit of filth resembling a street. Now imagine the whole laying down you coat so a lady can cross the way without sullying her boots or shoes. Less appealing, right? Oh good ,shit on the outside of my coat from the constant frothy buckets splashing from the filthy bastards above me into the foul street and laying it down every time the lady meets an intersection to get the inside all nice and juicy. Old timey me would say, “Seriously we have to stop walking during bucket hour. You’re totally buying me a new jacket once I’m done burning this one.”
People still believed in this thing called Miasma, or bad air, being the reason for ailments. Yay, science, medicine and mysticism are best buddies forever. What? Mysticism is the thing that doesn’t belong. Well, shoot. Miasma was popular in Middle Ages, unsurprisingly, but also espoused in Roman times. Usually considered to be more, you know, rational and learned. The germ theory didn’t seem to gain ground until Louis Pasteur in 1860’s (that around the Civil War time for point of reference). But he wasn’t the first guy to have ideas like this. The ever crafty Italians had some people with wacky ideas, who hopefully the Papacy didn’t lock away in a tower for daring to advance society, like Girolamo Fracastoro. Oh, he was born in the in 1470’s. Yeah, and we can attribute the syphilis to him, or well, rather the name. He subscribed to the theory of Atomism. Not quite what we think of as atoms but getting there.
All those facts above, tenuously held together, to me are more interesting that the vast amount of information fed to me in history classes. This is why history class as an adult pisses me off. History is interesting. And worse of all there is so much of it to look at. And knowing history is like the best game of hey you’re an idiot and let me tell you why. I highly recommend this game if you haven’t played it. Caveat you actually have to know more than other people and not just sound like you do. That’s the problem with this whole internet immediate gratification and delivery of possibly dubious knowledge. So here are few items to help you play that game. All basically say fuck you to ‘common knowledge’. I put common knowledge in quotes because, well is even more dubious than internet sources unless it’s taken from the collective unconscious thing then it’s probably legit.
Look at this excerpt below from an article I found. In your head, because aloud might be weird, say who first comes to mind.
“On March 2, 1955, [a young African American woman] was riding home on a city bus after school when a bus driver told her to give up her seat to a white passenger. She refused, saying, "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right."
Okay. You’re wrong. I know it’s mean but the above is about Claudette Colvin who predated Rosa Parks as a civil rights activist and hero but was forgotten by history. She was an expecting single mother and fifteen years old. So she eloquently stood up to an aggressor as young woman and later won a major victory for the movement when she went to court over the trouble which ensued. But civil rights movement chose to celebrate Rosa Parks instead, who most definitely should be celebrated, but isn’t there room for two defiant African American women who did remarkably similar things and both helped this nation move forward. Claudette was swept under the rug however and this is likely because a young single mother might not be the poster child envisioned.
http://www.biography.com/people/claudette-colvin-11378?page=1
Try this one on for size. What does the empire of cushy furniture (the Ottomans) and the Irish potato famine have in common? My first guess would be nothing. But as this ‘he you’re an idiot and let me tell you why’ that is not correct. The Ottoman Empire actually helped Ireland during the Potato Famine and defied the English blockade against the aid. I didn’t even know the English blockaded Ireland to stop aid. That never entered into my mind. The whole famine as it was presented to me made rather silly sense. How does an island starve? You could fish, right? It’s a bit more complicated than that and has to do with the English trying to fuck everything that isn’t English or something like that. I’ll let the article tell you:
“Ottoman Sultan Abdulmecid sent five ships full of food supplies and funds as charity. However, the British administration did not give permission for these ships to enter the ports of Belfast or Dublin. […] these ships secretly discharged their load in Drogheda, a town approximately 70 miles north of Dublin.”
http://www.thepenmagazine.net/the-great-irish-famine-and-the-ottoman-humanitarian-aid-to-ireland/
Now here is tidbit you can throw at would be nutritionists and Atkins followers. Who gives a shit what ancient man had to eat. Marlene Zuk an evolutionary biologist, a title given to people who eschew activities like video games and professional wrestling for learning (those poor bastards), wrote a book telling people who think we should eat like primitive man to shut up as their stupidity voiced aloud might affect the gullible and foolish. The book Paleofantasy (subtle as a hammer lady, er Dr., er, Dr. Lady?) basically says that there isn’t a need to live or eat as we once did it also dissolves some of the misinformation like the supposed paleodiet. Apparently “researchers discovered evidence that people in Europe were grinding and cooking grain (a paleo-diet bugaboo) as far back as 30,000 years ago, even if they weren’t actually cultivating it.” This information will surely piss of the anti-sugar fiends.
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/10/paleofantasy_stone_age_delusions/
I’ll throw another fact your way before we end the pseudo lecture. This source, while I would not say it lacks merit or that it is spurious, is cited on Reddit. This makes an immediate need for research. As is often the case in society we fetishize something to the point where its truth is no longer called into question. For some reason this became the case with swords. Now don’t get me wrong swords are cool (heck, I studied the Chinese Broadsword, by study I mean learned to whack people with it in a dojo not read up on it) but they are romanticized so much we think all major battle were fought with them. This is false. Spears were the weapon of favor. Samurai used spears, the Roman Legions used spears, and knights used spears. Swords were not nearly as effective in large scale battles. Also in the case of knights swords were rather useless against strong armor. If they had a sword in combat they often used the pommel end to smash the attackers head. Maybe in shield wall they might use small swords to cut under the shield and hack at ankles or groins but axes and hammers were preferred. But this is swept away as swords are undeniably cooler. Although Smash Brothers is a great argument for the effectiveness of the hammer as a weapon.
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/157upf/what_was_sword_fighting_actually_like_did_it/c7k1cd7
Now I hate using Buzzfeed as a source so I grabbed more than one for this knowledge nugget. But the article, or rather the grouping a pictures with some hastily crayoned “fact” below illustrates a rather interesting point. Sharks don’t really kill that many people. Sharks are scary things. They rank up their with the nightmare fuel that is spiders. But just saying that means rather little. Let’s have something measurable. Metrics are important. Every years a lot of people die often from embarrassing or frightfully awful ways. Hippos every year kill more humans than sharks. Hippos while they seem jubilant and too corpulent to be a problem (Fantasia is full of lies when it comes to Hippos as source by the way) they are in reality heinous killing machine. They kill around 2,900 people a year. Ignoring the Indiana Jones movie that never really happened ants are one of nature’s badasses. They are like the Borg; efficient, remorseless and adaptable. They kill more than sharks at 30 people per year. Then there is deer. You know Bambi. And no, they aren’t smart enough to take vengeance for redneck hunters who mount heads on walls (yet). They kill 130 people per year. Even coconuts kill more than sharks (150 people per year). This makes me immediate sad. I would hate giving that eulogy. Sharks only kill 5 people a year. But because of the film Jaws, a damn fine movie, people generally kill the sons of bitches. Peter Benchley, the books author (yes it was a book first you illiterate hobgoblin), is now a shark conservationist.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/20-things-that-kill-more-people-than-sharks-every
http://www.bookyourdive.com/blog/2012/4/5/things-more-likely-to-kill-you-than-a-shark
So now that I’ve given you fodder to educate the masses, against their will if need be, you can do what I do - critically think about how we really interpret history. We only know what has been written and recorded. Things like book burnings, the raising of libraries, or just passing outright lies as fact (you think todays’ pundits have this cornered?) have given us the shreds of history to wade through. History books do us a disservice by trying to sum up and group facts as if they are all encompassing. I patiently tried not to throttle a teenager who insisted that nearly all people in Europe during the Middle Ages were illiterate. I simply asked “how do you know?” and he stared at me with bovine intelligence. He parroted what he saw in textbooks. In my head only I continued the argument. I knew further engaging him in argument further would not lead to any enlightenment for him or resolution for me. George Carlin said, “Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.” In my head I asked him if he thinks everything he reads is true. In my head I asked him if only church officials knew how to read why would information counter to the church survive? Obviously this is unfair as there are other cultures out there storing, adding and deleting information but don’t fuck with my argument. I simply told him he was wrong, sting a few facts and turned away from him and started a conversation with someone who wouldn’t cause my mind to rot. Stymied he continued arguing out loud to no one. Fortunately ignorance is not always contagious. Truth isn’t always contagious either. I can hope that truth (which as some urn once told me is beautiful) is sought out. Seek on.
Ben
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Thanks for posting. You are awesome!