Wednesday, June 02, 2004
The Next Big-Screen Battle: Smoking
Positively frightening...
Yet one more reason to not have socialized government schools:
"It is 1899 and Denzel Washington, the American president, orders Anne Frank and her troops to storm the beaches of Nazi-occupied New Zealand.
This may not be how you remember D-Day but for a worrying number of Britain's children this is the confused scenario they associate with the events of June 6, 1944."
You're damned right its not how I remember D-Day happening. It was Tom Hanks!
Seriously though. Only 28% of them said that it was the start of the Allied liberation of Western Europe. I would have probably answered "It was when we invaded France, so that we could continue on to Germany." What I wouldnt have said was that we should have kept France. The article goes on to state how 60% of schoochildren in the UK couldn't name the wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchhill. Ugh.
"Ignorance about the Allied leaders, however, contrasted sharply with knowledge about Adolf Hitler. Overall, 71 per cent of the sample and 64 per cent of primary school children were able correctly to name the Nazi leader. Only one in three could identify the broad location of D-Day, with a number saying that it happened in New Zealand, Skegness or Germany."
I should have some pithy statement about this. But I dont.
"Even in those schools where the Second World War is taught, the emphasis is not necessarily on military events or even wartime leaders. One primary school teacher said: "We do study the Second World War but we do not tend to concentrate on particular military events or leaders. We look at issues that are relevant to children themselves. They learn about evacuation for instance, or the issuing of gas masks.""
"It was "absurd", he said, that children were spending so much time discussing Hitler and Stalin to the detriment of everything else connected with the war."
Indeed it is.
people had something to say.
"It is 1899 and Denzel Washington, the American president, orders Anne Frank and her troops to storm the beaches of Nazi-occupied New Zealand.
This may not be how you remember D-Day but for a worrying number of Britain's children this is the confused scenario they associate with the events of June 6, 1944."
You're damned right its not how I remember D-Day happening. It was Tom Hanks!
Seriously though. Only 28% of them said that it was the start of the Allied liberation of Western Europe. I would have probably answered "It was when we invaded France, so that we could continue on to Germany." What I wouldnt have said was that we should have kept France. The article goes on to state how 60% of schoochildren in the UK couldn't name the wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchhill. Ugh.
"Ignorance about the Allied leaders, however, contrasted sharply with knowledge about Adolf Hitler. Overall, 71 per cent of the sample and 64 per cent of primary school children were able correctly to name the Nazi leader. Only one in three could identify the broad location of D-Day, with a number saying that it happened in New Zealand, Skegness or Germany."
I should have some pithy statement about this. But I dont.
"Even in those schools where the Second World War is taught, the emphasis is not necessarily on military events or even wartime leaders. One primary school teacher said: "We do study the Second World War but we do not tend to concentrate on particular military events or leaders. We look at issues that are relevant to children themselves. They learn about evacuation for instance, or the issuing of gas masks.""
"It was "absurd", he said, that children were spending so much time discussing Hitler and Stalin to the detriment of everything else connected with the war."
Indeed it is.
people had something to say.
