Dave,

"A-historicity" is one major way that the status quo is maintained. You're right, if we want change, we need to know our history. This program (and others like it) could help us to have a better idea of our past, and maybe challenge us toward a better future. Thanks for letting us know about it.

In fact, thanks for the many other great articles over the years. I look forward to reading your challenging and informative insights and viewpoints. I do not always agree with you, but you always make me (re)think about the relationships between sport and society.

Your plea for remembering our past would take second place to our children being able to read at an 8th grade level when they drop out of high school. Dave do see the connection between our children not knowing the past and them not being able to read and comprehend the past. A television show is a good start but a comprehensive education is a much better one. For that to take place the children need and deserve a better education than what we give them. I suspect the amnesia that you decry is fed by the lack of an education ethic in our youth. The bigger problem in our society is too many children not knowing how to define their amnesia or even spelling the word for that matter.

But let's be careful not to slip into a critique too heavily dependent on 'personal responsibility' and 'laziness,' etc. Cold war imperitives aside, our educational system has developed in an environment which has consciously sought to produce sheeplike technocrats and mindless consumers, therefore its not suprising that investigation, curiosity and the attendant intellectual subversion which go along with them are rather hard to find in the culture at large. (See the history of the phrase and concept that we need to"instill consumption as an inner impulse," as well as the social engineering of the 30s and 40s, suburbinization, etc.)

However, anyone who has worked with community organizing or simply has had probing discussions with people from many walks of life knows that intelligence is not far below the surface, though the powerful try hard to undermine them, seemingly, at every turn. We are, after all, having this discussion through the idiom of sports!

See also: The School-to-Prison Pipeline
by Robert C. Koehler

Is A Terrible Thing to Waste

What Dave, no Tiger Woods commentary?

Do you ever feel like the lone (sane) voice crying in the wilderness? Amen to you brother. Thanks for the heads up on some meaningful information.

Perhaps children aren't paying attention in school because the things that are officially approved for the curriculum are so white-bread. I remember being taught about MLK being a good and nice man, but never heard about Malcolm X, the Deacons for Defense, CORE, SNCC, DRUM, or the Watts riots. We never ever covered the Vietnam war, wold war one, women's suffrage, or the labor movement. Because of the boring washed out pap that I was systematically spoon-fed, I absolutely hated history until I started reading some myself.

If we want kids to read, we need them to know there are richly rewarding worlds that can be opened to them through books. If this show can motivate people to re-think their perspective on history and pique some curiosity, I believe it will be a smashing success.

By the way, is anyone else surprised that the History channel is showing this? I thought that they dedicated their programming to expositions of the greatness of Reagan and the goodness of Gulf War 1.

The point I was stressing was that children have to learn how to learn. The curriculum is important but as you admit you read those subjects that motivated you and piqued your curiosity. One can learn from a white-bread curriculum by reading and thinking counter-arguments but one still has to read at a certain level to find those counter-arguments. Another way to state this is for a student to be an engineer he/she has to learn the fundamentals of math and physics. Once he/she is grounded in the science then one can go from there. My contention is that too many American students do not have the perseverance to apply themselves to do the hard work of studying.

You miss the point, and I think you fundamentally misunderstand just how class-divided American society is. I'm also not sure whether or not you're in academia, but as one who has spent most of his adult life as either being educated or educating I can say that the average American (white, of course) college level student has little except (!) the capacity "to apply themselves to do the hard work of studying."

What they don't have, generally, is an ability to ask fundamental questions. What our educational institutions produce is "systems managers" who do have the capacity for hard work, but who are unable to understand the system which engages (and employs) them.

Now, as for class divides, I grew up in a large metropolitan city and in my professional life I've worked at an HBC (Historically Black College) serving primarily the African American community and I can say that most of these students "GET IT." They understand, as a product of their experience, that the decisions and policies of the rich and powerful tend to be in the intersts of those they represent, and the rest are irrelevant. And they also understand that this is pretty close to a historical universal, and anyway what else would you expect in a system of heirarchy and domination. They also understand that nothing unique or profound is needed to understand this and all of the unique circumstances of the United States proceed from these simple facts.

Let's just forget the "Americans are lazy and selfish" thing please. They obviously aren't, as part of their DNA, any of these things, so there must be some socially constructed reason for whatever deficiencies are present. I'm not going to do your research for you, oh intrepid scholar, but if you've read, as part of your hard work, the Federalist Papers, or the works of early American historians and economists such as Charles Beard or Thorsten Veblen, you'll get an idea of where those reasons lie. Hint: Its not the inherent laziness of the average American!!

I'm not in academia otherwise you wouldn't understand me. Getting back to Zirin's column, I do not want to solely blame the amnesia that Zirin talks about on a class-divided society. It is. So what. Using a sports analogy (after all Zirin's column is entitiled "The Edge of Sports"), one can't win the game unless one comprehends the rules of the game and applies them

Who knows... but that's the analogy: like American leaders blaming the Iraqis themselves for the death, destruction, and bedlam in their country, there are many who like to engage in the blame game - especially when the blame can be directed back on the victims and away from the establishment's status quo.

The education issue (or lack thereof) is a complex mix consisting of various elements - but none of these elements were created by unmotivated children. Cornel West has written extensively about generations of black youth who simply believe that no one cares... Gore Vidal has written extensively about corporate America's de facto indoctrination program that's alive and well in the American school system... and Nicholas Von Hoffman has written extensively about how materialism & commercialism runs through this society like a main circuit cable - stealing the collective soul.

You simply can't point a stick at a child like a Dominican nun, make them tremble, and then expect the kid to flourish. The system is broken, corrupt, and entropy rules... unfortunately it will take a revolution - but alas, no revolution will come.

Only frauds and imposters (like Arne Duncan and his boss), putting Band Aids on gunshot wounds.

Huh???????

Make no mistake. I'll have a Woods column up tomorrow. Gotta be in the fray!