Pearl Harbor Day

[Briar Lee]

Our parents, preachers, and teachers would never let us forget that on December 7, 1941 Coxswain Urban Herschel Marlow, of Humansville, Missouri, died on the USS Arizona.



Urban Marlow was a childhood friend of my father, his mother was a widow, and Urban was a member of the Weaubleau Christian Church.

Today marks 81 years since the attack. In a few years everyone who was old enough to remember it when it happened will be gone.

It is well we forgive, but we should never forget.

 

[SlinginBlades]

I used to get mad, now in my oldy age, get sad whenever a "younger" person doesn't know or worse, even care about the importance. Last week was no different when I walked into one of my shop's & acknowledged the date with a client. His assistant didn't have a clue what we were talking about.

My neighbor's (both gone now) met at Pearl in '43. He was an injured Marine, she a Naval nurse. They fell in love, got married, & lived long, happy lives together.

 

[greysmoke]

My aunt -- my Dad's older brother's wife -- was the daughter of a Pearl Harbor survivor. As a young boy, I recall meeting him in his retirement, a former USN Captain. My uncle had met his wife while attending the US Naval Academy.

As it happened, my youngest granddaughter was born five years ago on December 7. When I mentioned the fact, her parents returned blank looks. Pearl Harbor was an earlier generation's 9-11 or JFK assassination: an event that pulls a nation together and galvanizes them into action for the common good. But it's generational impact is continually receding into our past.

Five years ago this past June, a dear friend and WWII veteran passed at age 95. He had served as an anti-aircraft gunner in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. He transited from Africa to Sicily aboard a freighter rather than a well guarded troopship. A German torpedo caused him and his shipmates to paddle in the Mediterranean on lifeboats until they were picked up. He ended his wartime career in occupied Paris after a total of 37 months in theater before returning home to the Pittsburgh area and taking up work as a tree trimmer. Ultimately, as a result of thoughts that rose unbidden as he bobbed in that lifeboat during the war, he ultimately embarked on a career as a Christian pastor. He remained the humblest of men to the end of his days.

 

[tbradsim1]

Who’s really to blame, the fucking schools!

 

[Briar Lee]

Who’s really to blame, the fucking schools!

Somewhere in this great land is the worst school, with the worst seventh and eighth grade civics teacher in it.

Even the worst teacher in the worst school in America today teaches every child the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Blame the parents, whose fathers never told them stories about Urban Marlow, back when they were both deacons.

And blame the preachers, who don’t tell young deacons about how the communion plates they serve were once carried by Urban Marlow.

And blame the hands of time, that year by year push the personal memories of those that lived through World War Two further into the past.

But those young people, that devote their lives to teaching children in our schools, are truly In His Service, although others fail.

 

[tbradsim1]

No No they don’t teach the kids, quizzed my Grandchildren, they were stupified about WWII, Korean War, Vietnam, , my grandkids are top students, history is a byproduct nowadays, too much dancing, theater, social skills, but nothing about their country. School boards that dumb down the parents on curriculum, if I wasn’t so old I would run for school board.

 

[The Algerian]

Teachers today are robots. They teach what they are told and from what I can see, they are told some asinine Jack.

 

[beefeater33]

Teachers are too busy teaching about LGBTQ bullshit to teach about history nowadays.............. It's sad and disgusting.

 

[Chasing Embers]

Teachers are too busy teaching about LGBTQ bullshit to teach about history nowadays.............. It's sad and disgusting.

My kids are home schooled now because of that.

 

[beefeater33]

My kids are home schooled now because of that.

My kids are grown now, but if I had it all to do over again, I would do the same as you.
Good on you!

 

[Chasing Embers]

Even the worst teacher in the worst school in America today teaches every child the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

They started cutting it out of the curriculum about 20 years ago calling it culturally offensive.

 

[Briar Lee]

I admit, that the hometown of Coxswain Urban Herschel Marlow who sacrificed his life at his battle station at the helm of the USS Arizona might even today teach more about Pearl Harbor than most schools, but they all teach it.

My legal assistant’s children bring homework to my office, and the truth is they have more homework than our teachers ever assigned us, back in the day.

What I don’t think the schools teach enough, is how to properly pronounce Colin Kelly.

It’s Caw len Kelly

Precisely, Caw len Kelly II (two)

The teachers leave out the part about “I realize I’m crippled that is true Sir”, but it’s still the same There’s a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere” our teachers made us memorize.

—-

In the 2017–18 school year, there were 3.5 million full- and part-time public school teachers, including 1.8 million elementary school teachers and 1.8 million secondary school teachers.1 Overall, the number of public school teachers in 2017–18 was 18 percent higher than in 1999–2000 (3.0 million). These changes were accompanied by an 8 percent increase in public school enrollment in kindergarten through 12th grade, from 45.5 million students in fall 1999 to 49.1 million students in fall 2017. At the elementary school level, the number of teachers was 11 percent higher in 2017–18 than in 1999–2000 (1.6 million), while at the secondary school level the number of teachers was 26 percent higher in 2017–18 than in 1999–2000 (1.4 million).

—-

The only thing I’d change about the public schools is give them all one dollar for every child they whipped with a paddle, in the classroom in front of the other children.

I’m older than ADD-HD.

We couldn’t have had that malady at school, for very long.

 

[The Algerian]

American education never was a great equalizer as it was imagined. In the 1940s an 8th grade education was not uncommon for many, many adults.

Schools have always been an extension of some philosophical point of view, Dewey being no exception.

Even Dewey might not have imagined where the schools ended up being today.

What is different, it that our colleges and universities have joined the public schools in lowering the expectations they have for students and dumbing down the bar for achievement.

What made America exceptional was not its schools - no, they actually worked against exceptional people.

What made America exceptional were its people.

Today, even this seems to have slid by the wayside.

If anything, the belief that immigrants have of America is what keeps us coming to its shores. In our minds, America is still a great place and is exceptional.

 

[mso489]

There are many reasons history has been so demoted in schools ... and homes! Many children don't see their grandparents on any regular basis nor have any idea about earlier generations. History doesn't begin as a subject in school, but as stories told by parents, grandparents, and older adults, to children, the good and the bad, the happy and the sad. Then a child is ready to think about even earlier generations in the classroom.

If kids don't have this connection, history is just blather. Also, it is not in the tests used to test students and fund schools, so there's not much incentive for teachers to emphasize it. Now, it has become politicized, so almost any facet of history is going to engender rage in some population of parents on one subject or another.

One of my early historical sources was being allowed to read, during free time, at my own choice, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Yes, this was written by a middle-aged white woman with a specific point of view as an abolitionist, but at least it raised the subject and the period in my mind and gave me a foothold on the subject without having to contend with parents, administrators, enraged activists on one side or the other, and so on.

U.S. history was one of my minors in undergraduate school, and I had some stellar courses, among them urban history taught by Arthur Osophsky at what is now University of Illinois at Chicago (not to be confused with University of Chicago), and U.S. Intellectual History taught by a visiting prof from George Washington U. in St. Louis, in summer school at University of Missouri at Columbia, when I had been admitted to grad school there in journalism, just as the Selective Service people caught up with me. That was the end of my academic career until I went back to grad school on G.I. Bill in a different field.

Kids don't know which came first, the French and Indian War or the Revolutionary War, the Korean War or the Persian Gulf war, and so on. As for Ancient History, European History, 5000 years of Chinese History, and so on, this is all darkness in young adults' memory banks.

 

[gubbyduffer]

Hearing this is sad. If these dates are so important to you then teach them at home. I am a teacher and don't like what I am reading. Hearing my profession being berated is not pleasant. I wouldn't dream of coming on here and slagging off what may be the professions of others here. I can only imagine how slagging off the armed forces would go down.
What many of you want taught is YOUR version of history. I bet there are many events and important dates many of you don't wish taught in schools.
Perhaps many schools are too busy fending off the rise of creationism.
I am a teacher, and believe me there are more important things a child can learn in life that the date of the D-Day landings or the evacuation of Dunkirk.
Perhaps your priorities are wrong when its seen that the best way a parent can prepare their child for learning is to send them to school with a bulletproof rucksack.

 

[mso489]

I was a faculty spouse for a quarter of a century, married to a more than totally devoted professor of English who had read the five best plays of Shakespeare more than a dozen times each. I have my late wife's teaching text anthologies, with contents highlighted in various colors and annotated in ink from repeated readings, hundreds of pages. At mid-term and during final exams, I would sleep with a t-shirt over my eyes while my wife graded on into the dawn, sometimes waking me up to join her on a cigarette run, since I didn't want her out there in the wee hours alone.

Non-teachers just have no idea. A relative who taught grammar school kids bought one little girl student underwear that her parents couldn't afford.

No one has to tell me about the unbounded dedication of those in the teaching professions. I lived it. Beyond belief.

 

[lraisch]

On a lighter note, December 7th is the anniversary of my first date with my wife of 52 years. I still tease her about "a date that will live in infamy".

 

[mso489]

I know there have been books on the subject, and much scholarship I haven't read, but trying to synthesize what I've read, it seems that FDR's administration and the U.S. military and admiralty pretty much knew what was coming but had the timeline wrong.

The U.S. had experienced so much public reluctance about entering the war and even a distinct enthusiasm among some groups on behalf of the Nazi regime in Germany, the the time didn't feel right. On hindsight, you can find obvious indicators that 1941 was the year, but in the mix of information, it wasn't so obvious or even probable.

Not just for military reasons, but for career reasons, the admiralty and Naval intelligence would have loved to have anticipated this correctly, and were working on it, but they missed their cue. So we had this holiday atmosphere at Pearl Harbor interrupted by fire and horror. It was a masterpiece of surprise despite warnings.

The Battle at Midway was the total reversal, as astonishing to the Japanese navy as Pearl Harbor was to the U.S.

 

[jpberg]

Hearing this is sad. If these dates are so important to you then teach them at home. I am a teacher and don't like what I am reading. Hearing my profession being berated is not pleasant. I wouldn't dream of coming on here and slagging off what may be the professions of others here. I can only imagine how slagging off the armed forces would go down.
What many of you want taught is YOUR version of history. I bet there are many events and important dates many of you don't wish taught in schools.
Perhaps many schools are too busy fending off the rise of creationism.
I am a teacher, and believe me there are more important things a child can learn in life that the date of the D-Day landings or the evacuation of Dunkirk.
Perhaps your priorities are wrong when its seen that the best way a parent can prepare their child for learning is to send them to school with a bulletproof rucksack.

And here’s part of the problem.

 

[OverMountain]

Teachers today are robots. They teach what they are told and from what I can see, they are told some asinine Jack.

Hate to agree because I was a public school kid but even teachers will tell you the “system” has changed greatly.

Those with no sense of the past will be more easily manipulated. Just like Henry Ford wanted, pupils just smart enough to operate the machines but not smart enough to ask important questions.

Btw, pipes represent independent thought to me. Esp the more I hang around these forums.

My grandfather saw Pearl Harbor in 1943 and said it was still torn all to hell.