British Kids Know Jack About D-Day

[DPDarkPrimus]

D-Day 1899 and President Denzel Washington is leading liberation of New Zealand from the Nazi's
By Chris Hasting and Julie Henry

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.
Pupils knew more about Saving Private Ryan than they did about the real events of the D-Day landings

A survey of 1,309 pupils aged between 10 and 14 and from 24 different schools found alarming levels of ignorance about the invasion of Normandy 60 years ago.

Only 28 per cent of primary and secondary pupils who sat the quiz last week were able to say that D-Day, involving the largest invasion force ever mounted, was the start of the Allied liberation of occupied western Europe.

Many of them could only say that it was something to do with the Second World War - though 26 per cent were flummoxed by even that fact. Some thought it took place in the First World War, or was the day war broke out, the Blitz and even Remembrance Sunday.

"It's a day when everyone remembers the dead who fought," said a 14-year-old girl at a north Devon secondary school. Only 16 per cent of 918 participating primary school children had the answer right.

One 10-year-old in a Northamptonshire school thought it was the day the "Americans came to rescue the English". Another thought D-Day involved "the invasion of Portsmouth". Various dates for the assault were 1066, 1776, 1899 and 1948.

Children also had great difficulty in naming Britain's war-time prime minister. Less than half of the overall sample and only 39 per cent of primary school children correctly identified him as Winston Churchill; a significant number opted for Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair.

Seventeen per cent of the sample and only 38 per cent of secondary school children identified Franklin D Roosevelt as the then President of the United States. Other candidates offered by both age groups were Denzel Washington (the Oscar-winning actor), George Washington, John F Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln and George W Bush. Some said simply: "George Bush's dad."

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.

Thirteen per cent could name two of the beaches involved, and only 10 per cent of the sample knew that Dwight D Eisenhower was the Supreme Allied Commander. Others thought that the invasion was led by Anne Frank, Private Ryan (the eponymous hero of the Steven Spielberg D-Day epic), or Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, Eisenhower's deputy.

The disclosure that school children know so little about D-Day comes a week before the country prepares to celebrate the anniversary and will again focus attention on what sort of history is being taught in schools.

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."

Dr David Starkey, the historian and television broadcaster, said yesterday that the survey had uncovered what he called a climate of "unfortunately reduced horizons and expectations".

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.

"There is nothing difficult about the concepts being discussed and no reason why a child of primary school age should not be able to understand."

He said that he did not want to go back to a situation where history teaching was nothing but dates and battles, but he said he feared that the pendulum had swung too far in the other direction.

"I think that trying to begin any subject by relating to a child's own experience is a useful tool. But education is about teaching children things they do not know."

Chris Grayling, the shadow education minister, said: "These are really very recent events that have shaped the lives of all of us.

"It is a real worry that so few children seem to know the basics of what happened during the Second World War. We must not allow this to continue."

There were some exceptions to the general ignorance. One teacher at Great Addington Church of England Primary school in Northamptonshire was amazed to find that one of his pupils had scored 100 per cent in the test.

He said: "I asked him how he knew material which we had not covered in school. He told me he had picked it up from a D-Day game he played on his computer."

Source

Can't rightly say I'm suprised. History seems to be the universally suffering branch of education.

[Montcalm]

WTF are they teaching in schools these days?

[DPDarkPrimus]

WTF are they teaching in schools these days?

More like what they aren't teaching...

[Stormbringer]

Oh, I'm saving this one!

[Howedar]

I consider it my civic duty to lie on surveys. I also take surveys with a large grain of salt.

[Darth Wong]

Remember the survey where 3% of them said that they believed the Cylon victory over the Human Colonies in Battlestar Galactica was a real historical event? Don't take surveys too seriously.

[Lonestar]

Remember the survey where 3% of them said that they believed the Cylon victory over the Human Colonies in Battlestar Galactica was a real historical event? Don't take surveys too seriously.

Which one was that?

*wants to look it up.*

[Elfdart]

I thought piss-poor history teaching was perfected here in Texas, where it's still taught in high schools by football or basketball coaches.

I agree about kids playing games with pollsters -something I do to this day.

[Plekhanov]

There’s a limited amount of time in the school day and there’s a hell of a lot of history to choose from. If school kids are taught about D-Day the next survey will say they don’t know about the Great Reform Act, the Spanish Armada, Monte Cassino…

We have to pick and choose what we teach kids and I don’t really see why it’s so important that they learn notable facts and figures about D-Day, personally I’d rather they learned about Passchendaele.

[Jadeite]

Arg, and I thought people in my school were dipshits with history.

[El Moose Monstero]

All that said, I don't recall ever being taught about D-Day, at primary school level, we did the Blitz and all the rationing effects that came with it, as soon as we got into history on any level of detail, the actual war was abandoned in favour of examining the reasons for it actually starting - we did the Nazi rise to power at least 3 times, once in Yr 9, again at GCSE level and again at A-level, but certainly not since I was 10 have we actually done something on the war other than the dropping of the atom bomb and the holocaust. And even then, as I said, I think it was almost entirely about the Blitz and the evacuation.

[Plekhanov]

D-Day is in many ways largely military history anyway which is a specialist branch of the subject and not really suitable to school kids anyway. Social and economic history is more than enough to be going along with.

[Hamel]

Those kids are probably bullshitting. Look at the obviously manufactured responses you get when one of Letterman's guys tries a survey.

[Dark Hellion]

Look at the ages as well. It is not suprising that students that are between 10-14 don't know all that much history. The perspective of time barely kicks in until you're at least 16 and some take into their 30s to finally get it down.
Polls like this are unrealiable as they don't test overall knowledge, just knowlegde of a specific event under poor monitoring conditions.

[neoolong]

Look at the ages as well. It is not suprising that students that are between 10-14 don't know all that much history. The perspective of time barely kicks in until you're at least 16 and some take into their 30s to finally get it down.
Polls like this are unrealiable as they don't test overall knowledge, just knowlegde of a specific event under poor monitoring conditions.

I don't know, if they aren't bullshitting then it's still pretty bad.

I mean even if you don't know the exact date, you should know that D-Day was in WW2 so it should be in the 40s.

[Dartzap]

Actually, around where i live, History is one of the better taught subjects, and D -Day especially, because we have the training sites, and towns where the army set up, all within a five miles radius of the school, and alot of the kids i know, all went to the rememberce cermony at slapton the other day, so that they could talk to all of the British and american Veterans.

I might go and check what the pass rate for history is around here.

[Keevan_Colton]

Unlike the US we've got a lot of history to cover, what if, like me, these kids had done the roman occupation of britain as their main history piece for primary school, and then the norman invasion in S1 and 2?

They admit that a lot of those schools dont have WW2 as part of the cirriculum, and those that do are concentrating on things that will interest children to learn more about history that memorization of facts.

[Dartzap]

For some reason, all i ever was taught in primary school, was egytion and greek mythology , and barely anything on the Blitz., and now all ive been taught in my secoundy school, is the norman conquest, Northen Ireland conflict, some local religious history, and alot about medicine, although i do like History, im really getting bored of this boring subjects..

[Dartzap]

damnd lack of an edit button!

[Col. Crackpot]

Unlike the US we've got a lot of history to cover, what if, like me, these kids had done the roman occupation of britain as their main history piece for primary school, and then the norman invasion in S1 and 2?

So you're saying that children in school only study the part of history that their nation existed in part of? Wow, i feel bad for those poor Egyptian kids. Moron.

[Gandalf]

Unlike the US we've got a lot of history to cover, what if, like me, these kids had done the roman occupation of britain as their main history piece for primary school, and then the norman invasion in S1 and 2?

So you're saying that children in school only study the part of history that their nation existed in part of? Wow, i feel bad for those poor Egyptian kids. Moron.

We had that right up until Year 9. If it didn't involve Australia it wasn't taught.

[Plekhanov]

Unlike the US we've got a lot of history to cover, what if, like me, these kids had done the roman occupation of britain as their main history piece for primary school, and then the norman invasion in S1 and 2?

So you're saying that children in school only study the part of history that their nation existed in part of? Wow, i feel bad for those poor Egyptian kids. Moron.

I think his point was more that there are lots of significant events in British history & school kids can’t really be expected to know about them all.

[Col. Crackpot]

Unlike the US we've got a lot of history to cover, what if, like me, these kids had done the roman occupation of britain as their main history piece for primary school, and then the norman invasion in S1 and 2?

So you're saying that children in school only study the part of history that their nation existed in part of? Wow, i feel bad for those poor Egyptian kids. Moron.

I think his point was more that there are lots of significant events in British history & school kids can’t really be expected to know about them all.

So the turning point of a war that determined the destiny of Europe and the survival of a race a mere 60 years ago is just another event that school kids can't really be expected to know? I find that disturbing.

[Keevan_Colton]

How much are you expecting to teach kids by the age of 10?

Britain has been shaped more by the romans and the normans than any event in the last 80 years. The industrial revolution and the two world wars are important events...so too though is the roman occupation, the hundred years war, the spanish armada, the norman invasion, the cylon war, the dalek invasion, the rennisance, the fall of the roman empire, the coming of the vikings...

How much of this do you expect a 10 year old to know?

[Dartzap]

Well according to some people, alot

according to others, not much