British children reckon the Spanish Armada is a national dish, Walter Raleigh invented the bicycle and 18th Century explorer Captain Cook was the helm of Starship Enterprise, according to research released today .
Frighteningly, a new survey also reveals that many also think that the Battle of Waterloo was fought at the London rail terminal, Horatio Nelson captained the French football team in the Nineties... and that thousands have never set foot in the sea.
One in six thought Raleigh was the brains behind the Chopper, not the adventurer responsible for bringing tobacco and potatoes back to our home shores.
And 14 per cent believe Captain James Cook instead of Captain James T Kirk uttered 'Beam me up Scotty' in Star Trek rather than command the Endeavour in his first voyage of discovery to Australia and New Zealand.
The report found six in ten youngsters didn't know the Battle of Waterloo was fought in Belgium.
Three quarters didn't realise Trafalgar Square is home to Nelson's Column, with eight per cent reckoning it's from Eastenders, while 15 per cent thought it was a shopping centre or chocolate biscuit.
And a worrying one in ten said Horatio Nelson was the captain of the French national football team in the Nineties and the same number said Christopher Columbus discovered gravity.
Only 58 per cent could identify Blackbeard as the feared real-life pirate, with one in ten believing it was Johnny Depp's Pirates of the Caribbean character Jack Sparrow.
Nine per cent thought Francis Drake wrote The Wind in the Willows, a shocking 22 per cent believed ships evacuated soldiers from Dover rather than Dunkirk, and one in six reckoned Nelson's Column commemorates Mandela's release from captivity.
A good laugh, but it's also deadly serious, because if we don't know where we've been we won't know where we're going!
5 comments:
Then again it is what they are taught in hisory or not as the case may be.
The older generation are not much better when they think that Britain fought the Nazis, Waterloo, Trafalgar etc for the benefits of freedom and democracy when it was all to do with maintaining their place as biggest empire in the world whilst stealing the resources and stopping the places that they themselves had conquered did not get their freedom and democracy.
Billy, true but, history repeats itself. You see it now with America. They are the British of the 19th century, except this time it's for oil. Mind you, most places where we have been that wanted freedom and got it, are now shiteholes, particularly in Africa, where tribal loyalties come into play, same way as they might have done here with the clan system, 300 years ago. We should leave them alone and let them develop naturally, the same way that we did.
Nonsense, the British were evil slavers,everybody knows Nelson Mandela invented the bicycle and Che gueverra freed us all from capitalist tyranny.
No one I repeat no one British ever did anything usefull ,apart from Labour MP'S who made our socialist, giro, caring, utopia for us.
Yours, (all meat is murder)
BBC Spokeswimmin.
and teacher
Anonymous, I thought the Giro(scope), was invented by Gallileo, the car by Henry Ford, (Scots descendent) and Utopia was a Greek island. I know who invented Socialism though and it was those fucking Marxist, Jewish, Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917. Oh, that's right Miliband's Grandfather fought for the Red Army against his native Poland. See, if you don't know where you've been.....
Same in australia my yr7 classmates know no Austrlaian history. P.s Rule brittanna! and i love brtish history.
Post a Comment