Interesting but not surprising <sigh>. Why is ignorance of foreign and American history not surprising to me? Well -- 1. I recently read Tom Fenton's book, _Bad News_, which discusses the decline of the reporting international news on U.S. broadcast TV networks. See http://shrinkster.com/cpj . Growing up, I remember watching numerous serious documentaries on TV (anyone else remember David Wolper's productions; NBC White Paper reports; "CBS Reports," etc? Check out the tv museum entry at http://shrinkster.com/cpn ) Now we mostly seem to get sensational tabloid fodder on TV. 2. As for U.S. history, consider http://hnn.us/blogs/comments/14405.html which is a blog entry by Thomas Reeves, a former U.S. history professor. Reeves can be a bit cranky sounding, and I don't know what to make of some of his disputes with former colleagues, described in other blog entries. But what he says in this particular blog entry is quite interesting. I cringed when I read the quote from the student who said, "I hate old stuff." Maarja -----Original Message----- From: Dean Debolt <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Sent: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 09:56:03 -0600 Subject: Early Friday Funny Our University is proud that on March 31st that we are hosting Lech Walesa, Polish Solidarity leader, to speak on campus. Our provost was granting an interview to our student newspaper about this and as she waxed on and on about Lech, his contributions and place in 20th Century history, it began to dawn on her that the reporter had never heard of this person, Solidarity, the Polish unions, and its effect in the breakup of Soviet domination. And of course, I had a graduate student last year, that when I asked her to check through our sheet music for marches by Sousa, she'd never heard of him. Ah well, back when I rode pterodactyls to school . Dean Dean DeBolt University Librarian, Special Collections John C. Pace Library, University of West Florida 11000 University Parkway Pensacola, FL 32514-5750 850-474-2213 [log in to unmask] A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List sponsored by the Society of American Archivists, www.archivists.org. For the terms of participation, please refer to http://www.archivists.org/listservs/arch_listserv_terms.asp. To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to [log in to unmask] In body of message: SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname *or*: UNSUB ARCHIVES To post a message, send e-mail to [log in to unmask] Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html Problems? Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <[log in to unmask]> A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List sponsored by the Society of American Archivists, www.archivists.org. For the terms of participation, please refer to http://www.archivists.org/listservs/arch_listserv_terms.asp. To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to [log in to unmask] In body of message: SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname *or*: UNSUB ARCHIVES To post a message, send e-mail to [log in to unmask] Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html Problems? Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>