Just ooc?

[orichalcum]

Two questions to judge whether I have a bad understanding of common historical knowledge:

1. Do you have any idea who the Borgias were?

2. Did you read Machiavelli in high school?

Comments

[emilymorgan.livejournal.com]

1. Yup.

2. Only brief excerpts.

Are your ducklings shocking you?

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

Shock, no, but between that and needing to explain the basic differences between Catholicism and Lutheranism w/o revealing my own prejudices, it was an intense day.

[holmes-iv.livejournal.com]

Yes; no.
(Woohoo, Samuel Shellabarger!)

[apintrix.livejournal.com]

ditto.. . (but who's Samuel Shellabarger?)

[lisa-bee.livejournal.com]

Yes and no.

As a high schooler, I had a general idea of who the Borgias were, and I heard about Machiavelli a lot in both middle and high school -- so I knew who he was, I just hadn't read him.

[retsuko.livejournal.com]

Somewhat, and yes. But I think that's part of the high school we went to. :)

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

Yeah; you're not much of a useful data point here, given that I know exactly what texts you read in 10th grade. :)

[jab2.livejournal.com]

yes i know who the borgias were. lucrecia was featured in my sister's color-in-the-infamous-women's-dresses- coloring-book, and we got to read all about her poisoning career.

i read machiavelli in DS. and in another yale college class. if i read any in high school, it was only snippets (heck, at my high school, we only got through 8 books in AP english, 4 of which i'd read on my own in middle school...)

[emilymorgan.livejournal.com]

Wow, what a coloring book!

We read all about the Borgia popes in AP European History and were duly scandalized.

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

I totally want that coloring book. :)

[jab2.livejournal.com]

http://www.amazon.com/Infamous-Women-Bellerophon-Books/dp/0883880350

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Awesome!

[ladybird97.livejournal.com]

I had that coloring book too!!

And the answers to your questions are Yes and No, respectively. I think we read about Machiavelli in AP European History, but not any of his actual work.

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

Also, I'm teaching Vitoria currently. Any brilliant insights?

[jab2.livejournal.com]

by Vitoria you mean Francisco de Vitoria, the Salamancan theologian?

if so, honestly, no. it's absolutely the right time period, but i do everything but scholasticism 1500-1550. I spent a bit of time this summer looking at what the scholastics were up to, only to find out that all they were interested in was commenting on Aquinas' Summa Theologica 2.2, the section on human nature (i.e., anthropology), in response to the Spanish empire and the need to determine whether indigenous people were human enough to treat as human. Since this topic doesn't lead to Christology or Mariology (though it should), I shrugged and quit looking. There is a big biblio on the human rights topic, though I was mostly looking in Spanish and can't give you English-speaking names offhand.

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we're precisely talking about indigenous people and so forth. Ah well - it was worth a try.

[lastclearchance.livejournal.com]

1. No.
2. No, but we learned who he was and what his place was in European history.

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

Yes, and yes. I was in the honors classes, though.

[pseudosilence.livejournal.com]

All I know about the Borgias is that they were an Italian family heavy into poisoning.

I think I heard about Machiavelli in high school, but didn't read any excepts until college. Knowing about him could just be one of those general knowledge things I picked up somewhere along the line, though.

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

Yes and yes. I had gained some knowledge of both prior to the relevant high school class because of my fondness for historical novels.

[a-dodecahedron.livejournal.com]

No and no.

[bloodstones.livejournal.com]

No and no. To be fair, we read a lot of Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor and skipped a lot of the dead white men at my high school, which has both advantages and disadvantages.

[cerridwynn.livejournal.com]

1. Vaguely. No specifics, though.

2. No (and i went to a humanities magnet...)

[viking-cat.livejournal.com]

Yes (As a kid, I thought the idea of a poisoning ring was just wonderful), and no. And I really have no knowledge of Lutheranism at all. I'll have to do some reading.

[karakara98.livejournal.com]

1. yes
2. I think there was a short exerpt in one of my world history courses, but we did not read the entire book.

[meepodeekin.livejournal.com]

Yes and yes, but IIRC neither came from high school assignments.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

1. The who?

2. Hell NO.

Even if you learned these in non-AP courses, your high school was pretty much all college prep, and a WAY better school than what most of America had. Sad, but it pays to remember that.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

self reply cuz i'm stupid: I see from your response to retsuko that you've already thought about this. I wish I had a suggestion for how to find out what the average levels of high school preparation are like... but I don't. Where I'm at I just learn it from watching a variety of students... and it helps to presume that some of my students came from little Catholic girls' schools in Nigeria... cuz some of them did, and YES this means their prep was radically different. I wish I had a better way to help you gauge this, cuz I know it's maddening!

[hillarygayle.livejournal.com]

1) Yes, but not from anything I learned in high school. Or even college now that I think of it.

2) No Machiavelli in high school for us. In high school we did almost all American authors, except for Shakespeare.

[banana-plants.livejournal.com]

No and no. Most public high schools in America aren't at that level.

[cookie107.livejournal.com]

1) No
2) Learned about, but didn't actually read any in high school. Although history was my least favorite subject and I dropped it for extra science classes Senior year of HS.

And as someone who was raised Catholic and is now an active Lutheran, I would not be at all shocked if none of your Catholic students knew how similar/different the two are. I grew up in an Irish Catholic family from Long Island, and can honestly say that I learned nothing about any other forms of Christianity until college. I didn't happen to have any active Protestant friends in high school (although I did learn a lot about Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism-New Jersey is an interesting mix) and there is no discussion about other faiths, even in a historical sense, in Sunday School/CCD. I was shocked when I went through my "conversion" classes, since there was one night dedicated to the history of the Lutheran Church, and one night dedicated to comparing and contrasting the Lutheran faith with other Christian denominations. If not for that class, I would have no idea of the differences in Christian beliefs.

And as a frame of reference, when my mom found out I was going to a Lutheran Church, instead of being happy that I was spiritually happy, she was concerned that I had joined a cult and they were trying to steal my money. A cult. Of Lutherans. Sigh.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

Wow. I... feel somewhat better about my own lacking understanding of the differences in Protestant denominations, because my parents were at least vaguely aware of the diffs and could help with it. Sorry your mom was that way-- my parents dearly loved their Lutheran friends and took us to programs at the local Presbyterian church along with all of our Catholic stuff.

[cookie107.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I had family members who almost didn't come to my wedding because it was in the Lutheran Church. My husband is a non-practicing Catholic (his parents we just thrilled we were getting married in a church, since none of his sibs did) so we compromised and did not have a full Eucharistic service--he was willing to take communion as a sign of our love, but leaving that part out made it "easier" for some of my family to accept coming. I found it ironic that most of my cousins who were married in the Catholic church don't go to church at all and it had no meaning for them--whereas I thought of my wedding as a spiritual gift and a blessing and had family who thought it was unacceptable. The up side is that my parents now understand more and will in fact go to church with me when they visit (although my mom really doesn't understand the differences since the service is "practically the same"--until I point out Pastor's wife and kids).

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

Actually, it seems to be the non-religious types who are extra-confused; the question was "Did Catholics really think they needed a priest to mediate between them and God?"

My Congregationalist training sort of muddled my attempt at a strictly objective answer about the Catholic idea of priests' special relationship with God.

[contrariety.livejournal.com]

1. Yes, but I couldn't tell you a lot of specifics
2. No

But I don't think your friends list is representative. We're all unusually well-read and most of us have independent interests in history. I would say the vast majority of the US public would answer no to both of these, particularly 2 (though more would know what it was than would have "read it in high school" - I don't think of it as typical public high school fare, because it doesn't fit - it's not really literature to be read in "english" and yet it's too long and specific to be read as an assignment in history) and even at an elite university you're going to get a non-trivial number of nos to one or both.

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

Well, no, but it might be well representative of "things that kids who go on to elite universities have read."

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

I had a similar thought. Some of us have a vague sense of how to adjust for guesses, but really, no. :) I mean, darkforge read Cixous in high school, not only Machivelli; his reading is completely unrepresentative of what "kids who go on to elite colleges" could claim.

(1. Yes, but not via coursework, not till halfway through college, and my undergrad reading range doesn't map to anyone's I know. 2. No, I read The Prince as the first text in an upper-div political survey, Machiavelli to Marx, because I needed an elective outside of my home department.)

If it helps any, orichalcum, the instructor for an upper-div special topic had to give the class a vague overview of Easter and Passover in order for (many of) us to understand what's up with Perceval not asking after the Grail (seder reference). Less obscure than Machiavelli, IMO, and yet....

[darkforge.livejournal.com]

1) Name rings a bell.
2) Yes, private high school.

[ellinor.livejournal.com]

1. Yes, but mostly I know about their history of patronage from my trip to Italy.

2. No, but at some point (maybe before high school or earlier) I learned about his philosophy in the process of learning what the word "Machiavellian" meant.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

1. In high school, vaguely.

2. We actually got to read The Prince, but I'm not sure we really understood it. People seemed to engage with it on a very superficial level.

[(Anonymous)]

Not really and no.

Math and Science high school. Excellent english classes (heavy on the Campbell-myth stuff and poetry), crappy history depending on who you got as a teacher. I started to read The Prince once a few years ago, but don't think I finished it.

[jendaviswilson.livejournal.com]

Me, cookies expired for some reason.

[denyse.livejournal.com]

1. yes
2. yes (but not as an assigned txt, I read it because my friends were reading it and we talked about it at breakfast. Ditto Gibbons and Suetonius and stuff like that) I was in the science stream, so only did humanities up till age 16, when we covered some shakespeare (Macbeth, merchant of venice, julius caesar and a few others), lord of the flies, things fall apart, canterbury tales (which was painful for kids who mostly speak chinese at home), that sort of stuff.

Admittedly, we only covered the Reformation and Counter-Reformation rather superficially in high school in the science stream. The arts/humanities types got a lot of that. We got multivariable calculus instead (which I can no longer remember) It's all in the GCE 'A' level curriculum.

[kidsnide.livejournal.com]

1. No, I skipped European history to take computer science.
2. Yes, but that was all about my social circle.