Children of the Revolution

On this, the 14th anniversary of Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, Prague resident Doug Arellanes translates a Czech newspaper's interviews with a bunch of local 14-year-olds. Example:

What comes to me when you say Velvet Revolution? Havel. The fall of the communist regime and the birth of a democratic state. What happened, I don't know. Brezhnev died?

More anniversary-related links and commentary can be found at the sites of Scott MacMillan and G.A. Cerny.

Comments

[Anonymous]

How can they be so ignorant? Tim Cavanaugh assured us they’re all geniuses.

[The Merovingian]

You’ll find similar attitudes in Poland. Of course I don’t find it particularly problematic for them to forget; this new generation has got better things to do than dwell on Soviet imperialism and the nastiness of their former governments as client states.

[The Merovingian]

Matt Welch,

Why does it need such? Why can’t they just have a laissez faire approach to such influence, instead of having some dumbass top-down attempt to manage it?

For liberatarians, you sure do like to wield the levers of governmental power.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Kids say the darndest things.

[rabidfox]

I wonder how many of our kids could demonstrate any understanding of US history — or any given point in time of American history. I must admit that I was once more or less ignorant of history, US and world, other than reciting dates and battles of course. But as I got older I began to read some of the background about what went on and why. Frankly, it was better/more interesting than most novels. I’m also becoming more and more saddened that this isn’t taught in schools – the motivations/historical context/reality of the people behind what went on because it all comes around again. I believe it was an Englishman who said that “Those who don’t know their history are condemed to repeat it”. Which is frightening.

[Tim Cavanaugh]

Back to school for you, rabidfox! That was no English pantywaist, that was George Santayana, a great Catholic, a great Atheist, and a great American (born in Spain, though).

[Anonymous]

Tim,

See what compulosry education gets you? A populace that are largely sick of learning.

[LB]

A czech friend described the Velvet Revolution as the night her and her other 14 year-old buddies went on their first serious fall-down drunk binge. The next morning, nursing a crippling hangover her parents were yammering on and on about politics and other equally boring stuff.

[Matt Welch]

Anonymous — I know yer having a laff, but I think what Tim was saying was that the U.S., if it is going to have this outsized influence on world affairs, needs a more knowledgeable talent pool from which to staff its foreign intelligence-gathering operations. This really is a substantially different — and more pressing — point than whether 14-year-olds from Lower Mumbulumbia know their own national histories.