Losing Touch With Historical References

There's no question that young people have recently been losing touch with the past. The decline in reading probably has quite a bit to do with this. We live in a sound-byte era that can't tolerate a train of thought longer than 5 seconds.

USA Today has an interesting article which speaks of how teens are losing touch with historical references.

Here's the opening section:

"Big Brother. McCarthyism. The patience of Job.

Don't count on your typical teenager to nod knowingly the next time you drop a reference to any of these. A study out today finds that about half of 17-year-olds can't identify the books or historical events associated with them."

The article goes on to show that just over half of 1,200 17 year olds could identify the theme of 1984 and less than half knew that the Civil War occurred between 1850 and 1900.

This is sad! Alas, the dumbing down of the masses..