Reply #5: That's what we get from several generations of turning the

[Lydia Leftcoast]

teaching of history over to football coaches. (When I was considering a career as a teenager, I told the guidance counselor that I was thinking of becoming a high school history teacher. He told me to forget it, that it was impossible to get a history teaching job without a coaching endorsement.)

I've told this story before, but a Japanese reporter who was embedded with the troops in the early days after the invasion was very excited when he found out that "his" unit was going to be camping near the ruins of Babylon.

He was shocked to find that none of the solidiers had ever heard of it. (And yes, I believe it. My high school, nearly forty years ago, had the poorest excuse for a history curriculum imaginable--American history taught by the football coach and world history that just jumped around to various thematic topics and never said anything about the ancient world)