2 posts tagged “tv show”

For a moment I thought this was a real billboard saying someone was missing (see the bad typography), since it was the only one I saw. Turns out now it’s for a TV show.

   OK, this was clever (and we do have a lot of clever ads) and I am very glad TVNZ is at least promoting one of its own shows strongly—but is it also irresponsible? By the way, I do not recall what the show is named.

A lot of people chide Americans for not knowing their history. When a contestant on Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? answers that Abraham Lincoln was FDR’s immediate predecessor, it’s easy to make that criticism. My belief is that we are all largely in the same boat, with a limited awareness of our history, especially in the west.
   Germans are admired for their intelligence and if you examine their economy, you can generalize that many of their exports are founded on the intellectual endeavours of the German people. But there is a similar lack of awareness, as I read in an old Wired article today:

In November, the first children born after the fall of the [Berlin] wall turned 18. Evidence suggests many of them have serious gaps in their knowledge of the past. In a survey of Berlin high school students, only half agreed that the GDR was a dictatorship. Two-thirds didn't know who built the Berlin Wall.

   The criticism of the US comes simply from the fact that more of its citizens are exposed to international scrutiny. Mount the same number of cameras or do the same number of surveys in other nations, and I think the same pattern emerges.
   It reminds us, however, that not only do we have to be aware of our history, we must protect it from revisionism, something that is plaguing countries such as the Republic of China.