Elder Rebel
How true but even more frightening is kids studying history now don't know who Winston Churchill is, when asked to name a Prime Minister other than Margaret Thatcher (they all seem to know her) they said they were not born then, 1066 meant nothing, nor did Queen Elizabeth 1, Oliver Cromwell, Horatio Nelson, they had heard of the slave trade but could not say whether it was before or after the Second World War, they had heard of Paris but not Berlin, the only places they knew for sure was football stadiums and night clubs. They are not required to learn about historical people or events but to 'imagine' what it was like to be a fishwife in the 17th century or some such twaddle.
Recently reported was the case of a girl studying Rwandan genocide as her specialist topic - her only source of reference was the film Hotel Rwanda - she seemed to know 800,000 people were killed with machetes but did not know Rwanda formerly belonged to Belgium.
How sad that we cannot provide a rounded education that encourages exploration of events and people and tells us how we got to where we are and the journey involved which is what history teaches us along with that exploration are the leasons we hopefully learned.
Let us also be very clear about this, the cost of state sponsored ignorance is £60,000 per head that is what we spend on compulsory education per child or perhaps it should be renamed attendance at school as education no longer seems to be the prority.