I once had a student, 18 or 19, who wrote an essay where he mentioned Vladimir Putin was the ruler of medieval England. I asked the student about this and it took me a few minutes and a Google to convince them they were wrong.
Another time, I had a student (a 20 something poc liberal woman) who wrote an essay about how egalitarian and enlightened the Spartans were. She was completely unaware of the Helots, pedastry etc. She was easier to convince.
Vladimir the Great is a possible confusion there with the first one, not England but a rule associated with dark age Christianity so maybe
And the second one I totally understand because there's a ton of fascist propaganda that love the Spartans so probably just got some of that at some point
Neither of these are as bad as US independence from Korea in the 80s.
I once had a student, 18 or 19, who wrote an essay where he mentioned Vladimir Putin was the ruler of medieval England. I asked the student about this and it took me a few minutes and a Google to convince them they were wrong.
Another time, I had a student (a 20 something poc liberal woman) who wrote an essay about how egalitarian and enlightened the Spartans were. She was completely unaware of the Helots, pedastry etc. She was easier to convince.
Those two examples stand out the most.
Vladimir the Great is a possible confusion there with the first one, not England but a rule associated with dark age Christianity so maybe
And the second one I totally understand because there's a ton of fascist propaganda that love the Spartans so probably just got some of that at some point
Neither of these are as bad as US independence from Korea in the 80s.
That's fair. Knowing basic facts about your own country's history is a much lower bar.