1066 and all that!

[Big A.T]

At work I was discussing a programe on TV. Someone in my office did not know why 1066 was a well known historical date. Further questioning revealed that he did not know anything about either of the World Wars, Great Fire Of London etc.

Is there anyone else out there who genuinely does not know these well known facts? I am intrigued! Does it reflect how bad schools are today or is it something else entirely?

[pjay119]

I for one was always told by my old ( and very wise ) history teacher that `` If one didn`t know one`s history one was doomed to repeat one`s mistakes `` .Could this be the reason todays youth are makeing so many ? .

[jake-the-peg]

Alas Pjay it seems that if history teaches us anything it's that we don't learn from it.

Maybe I'm biased but I'm a lot more worried about the state of scientific knowlege in the country (and to a certain extent the world)

It seems there are ever increasing numbers of people keen to express opinions on issues like stem cell research and the teaching of evolution who don't know the difference between an atom and a molecule.

[WoWo]

I agree with Teddybon in that it is a worry that there seems to be the perception that everything learnt must come from school. We certainly didn't study the world wars at school but I knew all about it from an early age simply because there are references to it everywhere. Almost every town has at least one monument to it with the dates on, and every year there are events like rememberance Sunday.

I was seriously lazy at schoole but I know a hell of a lot of stuff but to me it's all interconnected, for example the question earlier about "Valentina Tereshkova", I have no idea who she is, can't say I ever remember hearing her name, however I got the answer. How? Well she sounds russian, she is a woman, and the time frame was 1962. What was in it's infancy in the early 60's particuarly in Russia, the space race, logical.

[manxbiker]

i had a simular experence in a way at the pub a short while ago, before i tell you this you need to know two things first of all I am a regular in this pub, and second i work in a hospital. I walked in the pub one day and the barmaid asked what sort of day i had had, i said "one hell of a day" "why" she said i said "i am trying to get funding for some reasearch" ,"what is that" she says, my answer was "an evaluation of the effects of hops on the human liver", her answer was "are you a doctor or something then", my answer "well i have a spare 10 mins if you would like an examination", needles to say she declined, but my point is that she genuinely did not know that hops was one of the ingredents of beer and she works in a stockbrokers during the day hope you dont deal with them I thought that everyone knew hops were one of the ingrendents of beer

[JillP]

I think that we should be looking at the education system in general and the current 'Politically Correct' whitewashing to see why teenagers do not know their own country's history. It is not 'Politically Correct' these days to say that the British beat the French at the Battle of Trafalgar, no matter how historically correct that statement is. It would be even more politically incorrect to say that the English beat them. So, for myself, and this is just my opinion, I wouldn't be too hard on the kids for not knowing the basic facts that we learnt at school in the long ago.