Ah. My history lessons covered 1300 to 1850 - with much of it centred around 1700 to 1805. So that was the whole post Civil War reconstruction and invention of parliamentary democracy.
1) Come to think of it, I wasn't taught that at school either. Or at least I was, but it was part of Acnient History A level comparing Roman, Athenian and Modern British political systems. So not exactly mainstream programming.
The Gordon Brown "not having a mandate" thing really annoys me to. How long was John Major PM before winning an election? About two years.
2) "But just because you don't know how the world works isn't an excuse for it not working the way you want it to."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! You'd have to brainwash more than half the population to eradicate THAT tendency. It's all part of the infantalised, life-on-demand culture in which we live.
Oh, I know. Did you see that piece that was going around last week on the Principles of the American Cargo Cult? Seems to fit western society in general rather well...
As does the experiment that works on both pigeons and humans, where you have something that randomly dispenses treats/points, and the subjects develop highly ritualised behaviours as they attempt to replicate whatever it was that made the treats appear.
AFAICT this still isn't generally taught in schools even today.
I increasingly think that preparing people to participate in democracy should be a school's primary function. Certainly the need to teach science, math, history, geography and several other school subjects follow straightforwardly from that function.
it wasn't taught to me (I didn't get general studies as I was using the time to study ancient greek) but I absorbed it somewhere along the line - probably from the BBC. Nowadays people absorb from blog comments and wikipedia; I have problems with this...
how to balance your checkbook how to spot snake oil how to store food so it doesn't get crushed or go off before you eat it why the rates on regualr savings accounts are deceptive how to tell when a politician is lying...
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Why would they? It wasn't taught to me in school.
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Wow.
It ran all through my history lessons, and was taught as part of General Studies too...
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Oh, and I didn't get taught General Studies.
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The Gordon Brown "not having a mandate" thing really annoys me to. How long was John Major PM before winning an election? About two years.
2) "But just because you don't know how the world works isn't an excuse for it not working the way you want it to."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! You'd have to brainwash more than half the population to eradicate THAT tendency. It's all part of the infantalised, life-on-demand culture in which we live.
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Oh, I know. Did you see that piece that was going around last week on the Principles of the American Cargo Cult? Seems to fit western society in general rather well...
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Sentience is wasted on a lot of people.
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I increasingly think that preparing people to participate in democracy should be a school's primary function. Certainly the need to teach science, math, history, geography and several other school subjects follow straightforwardly from that function.
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I think it should have been taught, along with some basic philosophy, sociology, and general coping skills.
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how to spot snake oil
how to store food so it doesn't get crushed or go off before you eat it
why the rates on regualr savings accounts are deceptive
how to tell when a politician is lying...
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whenever their mouth is open...