Poor UK education standards

I give tours to young soldiers around the military museum in which I work and am amazed at how poor their grasp of British history is.

Last week I gave a tour to twenty seven SATT's, of that number only three had ever heard of Field Marshal Montgomery and only one of the Battle of El Alamein. Only two knew we had fought the Japanese during the Second World War. The only one who knew of Arnhem saw it on a film.

Several thought that British involvement in WWII ended with the Battle of Britain and after the Americans joined the War they did all the fighting.

They thought we simply went into our Anderson shelters or the London Underground, ate rations and listened to Vera Lyn whilst the Americans sent a Band of Brothers to Save Private Ryan.

What on earth are they teaching at school?

Cardinal

 

American history, perhaps?

 

It does make you think, especially when coupled with the fact that business' have to provide a remedial level of education to their school leaver employees.
I am also not convinced the new teachers in their late 20's/early 30's know a great deal either. I know one and I am always telling her things she does not know but should!

 

Not English, obviously.

 

Groan......! Not like in our day blah blah blah! Without googling name me 3 Battles of the English Civil war? Shaped our history no end but how often is mentioned?

 

It's the same in all fields I'm afraid. Every now and then I go into schools to give science lectures, it's always worrying when you have year 9s not knowing what the Sun is, being amazed that them funny sparkly things in the sky are stars, having pictures on the wall in science classes of the Earth in the middle of the Solar System.......

 

And of course the old saying of "those who forget their history are destined to repeat the same mistakes" Has been forgotten!
The problem with schools is they are now run by the left wing politicos who seem to be ignoring the facts and replacing them with lessons on how to be nice to each other, and how evil our forefathers were waging war and ruin on other nice friendly countries in Europe. We started the war you know by not letting Germany have it's holiday camps all over Europe

 

Without googling I give you:
Naseby
Edgeworth
Freedom Field,Plymouth.

I will google now to check

 

I like how in Plymouth the cannons on the Citadel face inward as that was King Charles' way of maintain

 

Bloody iPhone!

*maintaing the loyalty of the Janners!

 

Isn't it a bit of a cop out to blame the education system?

Parents also need to take an active involvement. My interest in military history was sparked by my father and I learnt a great deal more from reading/doing my own research rather than just taking in what they covered at school.

That said, the syllabus when I was at school did cover most of what you mentioned. Today I believe it touches more on the blitz and the evacuation.

Q

Mental note to self - must buy World at War series for when kids are older.

 

Also it helps if the history taught today shows some relevance to the current situation. The Iron Curtain was still up when I started secondary school, and went down while I was still there, so WW1/WW2 was very relevant. Anyone under 23 wasn't even born when the Berlin Wall came down so events since WW2 are more relevant to the world today so anything before 1945 needn't be touched on in such great detail.

I know that as far as WW2 goes it tends to focus on what made it start, the early stages of the war, the Blitz etc, the Holocaust and the aftermath of the war. The difference being that it tends to be one or two short modules in history rather than a term and a half's work as we did "back in my day".

I must add at this point that if I was ever going to do a degree it would be in history as that was by far my favourite subject at school.

 

My bold.
It seems that it's not just young people who don't about history..

 

It was 22 years ago, in 1989.

 

As a massive history saddo I'm always amazed by just how little otherwise very bright people know about history but it was my GCSE Maths teacher telling our class that the average grade for the subject was an E that really shocked me not sure if its improved in the ten years since then.