Winston Churchill was black

In a test for a new quiz programme, Teddy Sheringham's girlfriend was asked who Winston Churchill was. She replied "Wasn't he the first black president of the USA? Well, there's a statue of him near me and it's black". 

Hilarious, but I also find it a bit scary that there are adults in this country who don't know about one of our greatest leaders.

Apparently a history survey was done among English schoolchildren recently and they knew more about the existence of Hitler than Churchill - kids!!

^^^ Smart words peter! I agree with you.

Edited by Dreamer - September 02 2006 at 12:30

Peter Rideout wrote: That's sad, but not unusual.   I encountered plenty of woeful, almost unbelievable ignorance of the world, and history, when I taught in high schools: "The United States is a European country. So is Jamaica...." "Hitler died of AIDS, right sir? No? Are you talking about Hitler the First, or Hitler the Second?" "What side was Canada on in WW2, sir?" "Was Canada in World War One?" "Did you fight in World War One, sir? He was serious -- opinions as to when WW1 occurred ranged from 200 years ago, to practically yesterday. (That was in the middle of a history course called "Canada in World War One") Can't name three European countries (That was an entire -- geography -- class of "bright" grade nine kids.)

But sir, learning is boring!

I wholeheartedly agree with everything you just said, Peter.  I may not have got the best education, but I am glad I had a good grounding, from both school and my family.

I'm actually rather keen on learning myself, I just wish I had been more privvy to this when I was younger.

Infact, like your good self, I fear intelligence is slowly disappearing from the world.  Maybe it's just me?  But children and teenagers these days have no social skills whatsoever.  I mean, they can talk about girls/boys, cars, sport, beer and suchlike, but they cannot talk about actual meaningful conversations, because they either feel that kind of discussion should be left to the classroom, or they find it boring.  The attention span of youngsters nowadays is much smaller than I believe it used to be, it's such a shame.

Also, like you, I feel Television and even (oh no!) the Internet, is depriving the modern generation from learning even the basics of life!

I look back at the Victorian era and see many of the then public school boys used to read for their degrees, as well as being taught as well.  They weren't so spoon fed as they are today and they had a will to learn.

Times have changed and I am not sure they have changed for the better.  Infact, I'll stick my neck out and say they've changed for the worse.

Henry Ford famously said "History is bunk...", but i firmly believe the mistakes of the past can be learnt for the future. Most people i know fall into two camps - those that don't care or don't want to know what happened in the past, or how we got here, and those that must know...thankfully i fall into the latter category, i can't bear not knowing what went before !!

I see that Mr Rideout is the voice of reason here. The ongoing depredation of our sociaty is one of the sadest and scariest worries for the future.

Dreamer wrote: ^^^ Smart words peter! I agree with you.

Edited by Peter Rideout - September 02 2006 at 15:43

Yupp its especially frustrating being part of that generation. It seems like nobody can talk about anything but sex, drugs and rock n roll (not even good rock, just crap like Green Day ugh)

Edited by Minimalist777 - September 02 2006 at 16:25

I once heard from a friend of an interview with a member of "New Kids On the Block" way back in the '80s and he didn't know where England was!

Maybe it's an urban legend, but I somehow think it could be true.  I'll try and find out.


Edited by Geck0 - September 02 2006 at 16:42

Well... lets see
2 years of preschool
1 year of kindergarten
8 years of gradeschool
4 years of high school
1 year of college and counting...

Never once learned about:
The Vietnam War
The Gulf War
Iran Contra
The Constitution
The Cuban Missile Crisis

It seems that the schools love spending time on the civil war WWI & WWII and ancient civilizations. You usually get to around 1945 near the end of the year and by that time you'll be lucky if you learned anything new. I never actually touched on the Constitution of the United States until the last year of high school where we briefly touched on it in a college level class that you had to pay extra for. A good 10 years of my life was wasted picking out adjectives and verbs in sentences and trying to multiply two digit numbers. The standard 8 grades should be condensed into 4 and high school from 4 to 2 with an emphasis on math and science. 80% of the material taught in schools is repeated from the first grade.



Edited by Hierophant - September 02 2006 at 17:16