I got to the "invented spelling" shit and had to stop. It's not that students are getting "dumber" or "smarter," but that they are expected to know different things. Memorizing historical dates has no practical application beyond a history major; rote memorization of spelling words does nothing to teach the pronunciation, spelling, or meaning of new words. Teaching has become about broader concepts and connections, which has its flaws, but then, so did the original system they want to go back to. Otherwise it wouldn't have been changed.
+1
Yes, it is embarrassing if, in a discussion, I have to Google the dates of the Civil War. It makes me look stupid. However, I should point out that being forced to memorize this date doesn't contribute in any way to my understanding of the war in question; I still know quite a bit about it. I just don't remember some number that's tangentally related to it. So I would ask: Which is more helpful to teach American students?
1. The American Civil War was fought between 1861-1865 (I thought it was 1850; I was close!)
2. The Civil War was almost won by the South due to a crippling lack of military strategy by the North's forces; they pulled a British Empire and tried to march straight in, only to be destroyed by Robert E. Lee. In fact, until the Battle of Gettysburg, the South was all set to march on Washington, D.C.
If it seems I'm being unfair by including WAY more info in #2, consider this: I had to Google the dates; I memorized #2.
The annoying part is, I don't care about the
names of the battles of Shiloh, Antietam, et al. nearly so much as I do about the general pattern of Southern aggression at the beginning of the war, Northern retaliation at the end, a general idea of how many casualties there were, how POWs were treated (horribly), and why the war was fought in the first place. Yet middle school history classes ignore all the important stuff in favor of "the battle of Blahblah was fought on such-and-such date." THAT'S NOT THE IMPORTANT PART!
AP Modern European History* was equally annoying. We started with the Hundred Years' War, and an explanation that the English king was a vassal of France. I had
absolutely no fucking clue why the English king was beholden to France, and wouldn't find out until I stumbled upon the historical fiction of Susan Penman (mostly set during the lives of Eleanor of Acquitaine, Richard the Lionheart, and John II). I learned mroe about the causes of the Hundred Years' War from
fiction than I did from the actual history class.
* The book only went up to the 18th century or thereabouts. There was far more Renaissance/Tudor-era discussion during that class than there was anything in what most of us consider the modern period (roughly 1600-present).