Scott wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On Sun, Apr 23, 2006 at 07:22:10PM -0400, Matthew G wrote: > >> United States I learned the states in umm 4th grade though I forgot >> more than half of them because I never use the infomation. Thanks for >> the suggestion about kgeography but I pretty much hate learning. I >> just like the computer stuff. I hate math to can you believe that! >> > > Hrrm, what part of the US? I don't know when I learned of the existance > of Malaysia, but of course, we had to read more in those days. (And, of > course, walk 5 miles to school, barefoot in snow--and it was > uphill--both ways.) :) > > Sigh, our wonderful system of education in the US strikes again. > > Mathew, that isn't an insult to you. It's aimed at the system of > education in so many states. > > (Sad to say, as soon as I saw the email asking, I thought to myself, > 'Ah, must be from my country.') > > > I cannot recall ever having learned anything specific about Malaysia in school, nor even anything vague about its existence or location. American public school education was, even in my dayz (the 1970s), pretty spotty on geography in general, but downright bad on Southeast Asia. You'd think, after years of fighting an enormously controversial war in the region, that we'd have learned more about it. But I think that, by the mid-to-late 70s, we weren't taught about the region because nobody wanted to talk about it anymore. Well, except of course for the Philippines, which we learned was a very happy place under a good guy named Marcos, who was a great ally of America. Heh.
I probably learned more about Malaysia from a college friend who's father was a diplomat with the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur than from any other single source. She spent the summer after freshman year there and sent me a few letters. Yes, folks, back then people actually wrote letters, by hand, in ink, that were delivered by something called the "Post Office." We didn't have no stinkin' email. The advantage of that is that I still have my dad's letters to my mom from the late 1960s, when he was stationed in Thailand. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson _______________________________________________ arch mailing list [email protected] http://www.archlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/arch
