Who remembers World War II?

So I seem to do most of my blogging on weekends. A smarter man might stockpile weekend writing for posting during the week.

When you surf all corners of the Internet, you find some amazing things. Of course, it's much easier to simply let a website like Fark bring them to your attention. Such was the case earlier this week with a San Francisco Chronicle article entitled 'For class of S.F. high school, WWII details are elusive'.

What was I expecting? Something along the lines of a "today's students aren't educated enough about major historical events like World War II". I'd be fine with that.

I don't pretend I know everything there is to know about WWII, but I like to think I know the basic facts - started in the late 30s in Europe, the US got involved with the bombing of Pearl Harbour in 1941, and the war ended in 1944. The Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima had atomic bombs dropped on them, and Hitler committed suicide. D-Day. Churchill. Normandy. That sort of stuff.

I don't have a problem with people who know a lot less about WWII than I do. If you have a rough idea of when it happened, who was on your side, who was on the other side, and what the Holocaust was, that's enough for me.

The Chronicle surveyed 90 high school students - all of whom should have covered WWII in history class by this point - and here were some of the responses.

"Hoping to aid Third World countries, the United States joined the war."

To the question "Who was US President during WWII?", eighteen students left the question blank, while Winston Churchill (UK) and George Washington (dead) each garnered votes.

To "When was World War II?", dates ranged from 1700 to 1967.

"Who was Winston Churchill?" - answers ranged from 'a dictator' to 'some important dude'.

"Who was Benito Mussolini?" - answers included 'Soviet leader', 'an explorer' and 'a columnist'.

"What was the war about?" - obviously there are lots of possible answers for this one, but I doubt that 'communism' or 'Boston tea' had anything to do with it.

So, yeah. Overall, I can make excuses for a lot of ignorance - but the Chronicle's survey is taking things to a whole new level.

--Ryan