Schools told to dump Churchill and Hitler from history lessons
Secondary schools will strip back the traditional curriculum in favour of lessons on debt management, the environment and healthy eating, ministers revealed.Even Winston Churchill no longer merits a mention after a drastic slimming-down of the syllabus to create more space for "modern" issues.
Along with Hitler, Gandhi, Stalin and Martin Luther King, the former prime minister has been dropped from a list of key figures to be mentioned in history teaching.
This means pupils may no longer hear about his stirring speeches during the Second World War, when he told Parliament that defeating Hitler would be Britain's "finest hour".
I'm reminded of a famous quote:
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
How can anyone intelligently discuss current events without a historical context? The answer is they can't. But, they will feel really good about themselves while they spout nonsense.
Run, don't walk, to the nearest exit!
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Related Tags: homeschool, public school, Education reforms, Education in Britain, Hitler, Churchill
6 comments:
I was never taught about WWII in all my years of public schooling. If my dad hadn't been a collector of WWII aircraft, I wouldn't have known anything about that era. We always ran out of school year before we got to that part of the textbook. Dh and I made sure we taught our kids about it, though.
You all do such a good job with this blog. That's why I've nominated you for a Thinking Blogger Award:
http://barbaramfrank.blogspot.com/2007/07/thinking-bloggers.html
It's funny the things they don't teach you in public school.
Enjoyed the post
I recommend the book "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James Loewen.
I took AP US History as a junior in high school (and actually paid attention). While reading that book there were times I found myself saying, "Wow, I didn't know that" or "I hadn't really thought about it in that context before."
I learned very little worthwhile history in school. Everything I know now, I learned while homeschooling my children.
I've only read excerpts from the "Lies My Teacher Told Me." Seems like a great book.
I remember not knowing what Watergate was -- beyond a word that the Grownups used for something Very Bad that happened a long time ago -- until I decided to do a history paper on it my senior year of high school. I think that Vietnam was also never mentioned in my 1980's history books. Doomed, indeed.
Wow. I guess that I know about those things because I was old enough to remember them when they happened.
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