Basic Knowledge of History

To my mild surprise and disappointment, I confirmed that most people are ignorant of the most basic historical facts.

I was hanging out at Mercury last night, an early nite. [I left before the throngs beached themselves there.] One of my new favorite bartender Parker was there and he and I started on a conversation and ended up listing the American Presidents (separately) because the topic veered to American History.

I said to him that out of the 43 Presidents (including two termers) and excluding two termers, probably 38?, I can probably only list 20 of them. So, he and I jotted them down. Took about 15-20 mins.

I was able to, to my surprise, list 27 and he 22. I thought that anything more than 20 is pretty good relative to most people. Honestly, most of the 19th century after Andrew Jackson and after Lincoln was a blank in my mind.

We then decided to continue our line of conversation and decided to draw up some basic American History question and test it out on the staff there. Here's the list that we came up with. 8 questions. Again, basic, not esoteric and in terms of dates (years), we would allow a plus or minus 6 yrs.

1) Who were the 3 Axis powers in WWII?
2) When was the Civil War?
3) How many years did the American Revolutionary War last?
4) When was WWI?
5) How many countries sent a man to space? [Not entirely American History but close enough.]
6) Who was our 2nd President?
7) What were the 2 places that the Atomic bombs were dropped in WWII?
8) How many times does the Earth rotate around the Sun every year? [OK. I threw in a Science question].

I thought that these were indeed very basic questions that anybody who graduated from High School should know. But no one there except Parker and Darrin, the manager (who came close) got all of the answers right. Some of the (wrong) answers given:

1) Russia
2) Late 1700s
3) 1776
4) Late 1800s
5) Two
6) Thomas Jefferson
7) There were two?
8) Earth rotates around the Sun 4 times a year; Sun rotates around the Earth and Earth rotates around Mercury.

[I would actually like to ask these questions to Sarah Palin. I'm sure that there would be some great Tina Fey moments from it.]

In any case, even for me, I didnt know the answers to some of these questions after college. But I knew that I should know them. Not because it effects my life in any direct way. But because basic questions should be known by all educated people and that we are better decision makers by knowing facts, contexts, and outcomes from the past. These reference points dont dictate but can guide our decision making. So that we know the pitfalls and the hazards of actions that went before us vs. simply using 'common sense' in a vacuum.

This experiment just confirmed my belief that all opinions do NOT have equal weight and some opinions are actually better than others.

Nowadays, everyone thinks that their opinions matter just as much as anyone else's. But no. If you do not till and cultivate the soil from which your views sprout from, the fruits of those views can not be as ripe and fully formed as the ones based on curiosity, knowledge, and insights. Can anyone disagree with this?

FYI-- I naturally lose respect for people who do not have a basic knowledge of History and Science. [Of course, I suspect, that if one doesnt know the basics of History and Science, the rest, like Literauture, Art, Economics, Architecture, etc. would be quite a stretch. Their lack of curiosity is, to me, an indicator of potential fallacies in their opinions and to a certain degree, their lack of curiosity seems shameful. Think George W.]

However, this doesn't necessarily mean that curiosity makes me smarter either. But it does mean that I am more curious about some basic facts and pursuit of knowledge in general. It also doesnt mean that I dont enjoy being around people who I like (like the Mercury staff). But it does mean that our conversations will have limits. In the end though, I'd rather be with people who are fun and good hearted people than Jeopardy geeks who are boring or cold intellectuals who have no hearts.

But again (I'm going in circles here... sure, why not), the people I enjoy the most are the curious ones with a big heart.