This column series offers replies to what is published in the current “text books,” which are adopted by the State and school districts.
BY HAMILTON HANSON
The same types of education errors hold true in the CIVICS books. America is not a country; it is a land mass. North and South America are named for Americus Vespucci. But they are land masses, not geopolitical entities. Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution of the UNITED STATES (a legal, legitimate country WITHIN the land mass known as America, not Asia) provides that we are a “Republican form of government.”
There is no reference in the Constitution that the US nation is either American or a democracy.
In math, common arithmetic used to be one plus one equals two, or mathematically, 1 + 1 = 2. The sum of 1 + 1 is 2. The product of 10 x 12 = 120. The quotient of 120 divided by 12 = 10. The difference of 1 – 1 = -0-.
There was a time before computers that we low-end laborers had to actually count out change. My first big lesson with the new life existence was probably in the early 90s when I was in a grocery store and the electricity went off. Since I was at the cashier, she mechanically opened the drawer and stopped. After a few exchanges, she, a late high school student, acknowledged that she did not know how to count change. I split a gut internally!!
So, I explained it to her and had her count out my change. Starting with the total on the receipt/bill, one adds the pennies to come to the amount that is either a -0- or 5, as in a receipt/charge slip ending in 2 plus 3 pennies makes 5 cents. If the amount – now the bill amount plus the pennies – equals 5, add a nickel to make an even -0- amount. Now, take sufficient dimes to make $1.00. Next, count out the number of $1 bills to make a 5 or -0- as the total. If the total is $5.00, count sufficient $5 dollar bills to make a -0- total, and then take sufficient $10 bills to make a $20 or $40 and so on. When this process is completed, the total of the change in the customer’s hand and the receipt will equal the total amount of the currency that the customer presented to pay the bill/invoice/check.
Many people ask: What’s the big deal? Why do we need to know these items. The very large answer is what America has become because we no longer teach/use these common standards, which, when combined with so many other basic standards, have lost the country that was born from the concept of freedom, which was a most important part of the restrictive founding/governing document. Today’s loss of basic educational concepts, violations of the Constitution, loss of ethics by so many of our elected officials – all lead to the current decline of our nation.
