"Cultural Amnesia" Threatens Democracy.(Brief Article)

From: USA Today (Magazine) | Date: August 1, 2001 | Copyright information

Americans' grasp of history is slipping away, and this cultural amnesia is a threat to democracy, according to Stephen Bertman, a cultural expert at the University of Windsor, Canada. "In a recent poll, 60% of adult Americans couldn't name the U.S. president who ordered the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Over 20% didn't know where, or even if, the bomb had been used," he reported to the World Future Society, Bethesda, Md.

The dumbing down of America is a real threat ...

Related newspaper, magazine, and journal articles from HighBeam Research

"Cultural amnesia" threatens democracy
USA Today ; HISTORY Americans' grasp of history is slipping away, and this cultural amnesia is a threat to democracy, according to Stephen Bertman, a cultural expert at the University of Windsor, Canada. "In a recent poll, 60% of adult Americans couldn't name the U.S. president who ordered the dropping of the
Healed by democracy
The Press ; In Clive James's recent collection, Cultural Amnesia, which has a lot to say about terror, he quotes Virginio Rognoni. To whit: "In whichever way a democratic system might be sick, terrorism does not heal it, it kills it. Democracy is healed by democracy." The question of how a liberal democracy
Fallen heroes.(Books)(Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts)(Book review)
Commonweal ; Cultural Amnesia Necessary Memories from History and the Arts Clive James Norton, $35, 768 pp. Somewhere in the ether of critic Clive James's imagination is a dowdy mitteleuropaisches coffeehouse where the shades of twentieth-century Western humanism congregate. Mostly French or Jewish,
Clive James' Europe without Baedeker.(Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time)(Book review)
Quadrant ; Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time, by Clive James; Picador, 2007, $49.95. I find that any self-respecting artist must be, and in more than one sense of the term, an emigre. --Witold Gombrowicz THE EMIGRE Clive James is surely one of the t good things English journalism has going for
Looking for the Cure for Cultural Amnesia
Solares Hill ; Who is that woman dressed like George Washington standing in a boat at the corner of Olivia and Simonton streets? Her identity, revealed to me when I relocated to Key Vest three years ago, was mportant enough to lock iway in my long-term memory. It took me a few minutes, but I eventually found the
Total Recall
The Village Voice ; Total Recall Is Clive James's effort to save Western civilization beautiful, stupid, or both? Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories From History and the Arts By Clive fames Norton, 876pp., $35 BY GARY INDIANA Clive James is the quintessential critic at large, what someone who delves into many
Leading Lights; A polymath picks the historical and artistic figures that we should all know.
The Washington Post ; ... But none of this makes the often delightfully autobiographical Cultural Amnesia less cherishable. The warts are few; the all is absorbing. John Simon is the New York theater critic for Bloomberg News and the "Etcetera" columnist for Broadway.com.
This is one strange book. Strange and frequently wonderful.(While We're At It)(Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts)(Brief article)(Book review)
First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life ; * This is one strange book. Strange and frequently wonderful. Weighing in at 852 pages, Clive James' Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts is not going to be read by anyone at one sitting. James is an Australian-born British literary critic and television personality now
Best of a bad bunch? Given that it failed in both ancient Greece and ancient Rome, is democracy really the best available system for the governance of modern societies?(Geographical dossier/democracy)
Geographical ; Democracy was never intended to rule nations. At its first appearance, in the city-state of Athens in 507 BC, the term was often applied pejoratively by aristocratic critics expressing their disdain for the common people--the demos--who had usurped their stranglehold on power. At that time, Greece
Contrasting perspective on democracy?
Journal of Social Studies Research ; ABSTRACT This study examines conceptions of democracy held by undergraduate college students majoring in elementary education, history, and political science. The study extends a study by Ross and Yeager (1999) that examined preservice elementary teacher education students' conceptions of