1/4 of young Britons think Churchill was a myth

From Yahoo

I smell an international spin-off to "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?"

Wow. Britain's stupid. Guvnah.

Wow. That's.... I'm glad the US doesn't have a monopoly on that kind of stupid.

Me, being a citizen of the US, and I've never even been to anywhere in europe, know who he was. Christ, he only died in the 60's

No one has the monopoly on that kind of stupid.

Indeed. There's more than enough stupid in the world to go around.

There's.... there's got to be something missing from that article, something massively important that they're misrepresenting or some major flaw in the study. If not... oy.

Prederick wrote:

There's.... there's got to be something missing from that article, something massively important that they're misrepresenting or some major flaw in the study. If not... oy.

I thought the same thing Pred. It's like that 'survey' I saw a few years ago stating '47% of Americans do not recognise the president by name.' They must really hunt for a ridiculous demographic to misrepresent in this fashion. Either that or just make completely bogus claims without actually doing the research.

I'm ashamed of my country if this is true.

The Torygraph has more detail:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/04/nhistory104.xml

So it was a bunch of 3000 teenagers. Clutching at straws, I suppose it's possible that it was a written survey and the children took the piss. They seem to be trying to get it wrong.

However, history in school now is more specific to a period than a general historical knowledge. Children do a small number of subjects in detail, so it is entirely possible that it wasn't on the curriculum, and so if they didn't meet facts about Churchill at home or on telly they wouldn't meet him at all.

You mean Sherlock Holmes isn't real? Oh God. Now I'll have to throw my cocaine away.

Didn't you get that memo?

DudleySmith wrote:

So it was a bunch of 3000 teenagers.

Well, that explains it.

At last, I can plug one of my favorite bits of trivia: Winston Churchill received a Nobel prize for literature.

wanderingtaoist wrote:

At last, I can plug one of my favorite bits of trivia: Winston Churchill received a Nobel prize for literature.

Which he received for his factual chronicling of the life of Sherlock Holmes?

The original article wrote:

...according to a poll out Monday which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.

It was bound to happen eventually. I mean, we just keep making more history, and we're long past the point that everyone can be expected to remember all of it.

Should I be happy that stupidity of this level is a world wide phenomena or should I be extremely frightened for the future of humanity? Kind of makes you think the later and endeavor to find a way off the planet via hitchhiking across the galaxy.

Well, I'm going to need some meatheads to pick litter up, clean the roads, stack shelves in my supermarket and all that. These guys seem eminently qualified for a life in unskilled labour, never needing to use Mr Brain.

That's the theory at least. I expect that these guys will actually be sponging off the state whilst immigrants actually do all these things.

I expect that these guys will actually be sponging off the state and breeding, whilst immigrants actually do all these things.

Fixed that for you.

So, when I was 13 in 1975, a large number of my peers had no idea who the President of the USA was during WWI. That's a 60 year gap, just like 1945-2005. (I knew this because I had an interest in history and gaming.) I went to an academically focused private school.

Don't see why this should be any different. Although it would sound better the other way around - "75% of UK teens recognize Churchill's name 60 years on."

But Robear, if your peers had been asked whether Woodrow Wilson was a real or a fictional figure, wouldn't more than 75% have known the answer? It's one thing to not be able to name him cold, but to not even know whether a person was real shows a deeper level of ignorance.

The Telegraph wrote:

Paul Moreton, the channel head of UKTV Gold, which commissioned the poll, said that while there was no excuse for demoting real historical figures such as Churchill, the elevation of mythical figures to real life showed the impact good films could have in shaping the public consciousness.

Can we say "PR stunt"?

dhelor wrote:
DudleySmith wrote:

So it was a bunch of 3000 teenagers.

Well, that explains it.

Also, 35% of Britons think that the cause of WWII was the rise of 8=====) in Germany.

In other news, 1/4th of the Brits are at any given time drunk.

65% of people taking surveys are willing to put down wrong answers for a laugh, while 56% of people taking surveys are getting paid and recognize that by finishing in 10 minutes their average wage exceeds 15$\hr.

DudleySmith wrote:

So it was a bunch of 3000 teenagers. Clutching at straws, I suppose it's possible that it was a written survey and the children took the piss. They seem to be trying to get it wrong.

It's not a bad idea. These are teenagers, after all. Did they win any money for correct answers? Public shame for incorrect ones? Is it a phone survey? Anonymity + some adult asking you easy questions = Winston Churchill, wasn't he the gay Teletubby?

Apparently in Britain they don't have endless numbers of documentaries, books, and movies about World War 2. Or comic books. Or cartoons. Churchill is all over the place.

Maybe it's all because he's more idolized here than he is there.

Could it have actually been a very thoughtful response that the Winston Churchill we discuss today is actually a man of mythic proportions, compared to the human story of who he was?

The Sherlock Holmes answer is very interesting too. I mean if you think about it, once we die, really all that will remain is the story of our lives. How that story is retold will define us for future generations. It might be natural that over time, a popular fictional character who is recorded in detailed narratives for future generations may become more real than a human, whose life story and thoughts were never memorialized in a biography. In the end, maybe the sad fact is that our lives are thrown into competition with the fictional beings of literature, and since we are less documented, we essentially fade out and become less real over time.

I have a poster of this in my room.

Pretty much the most awsome thing ever.

Funkenpants wrote:

Apparently in Britain they don't have endless numbers of documentaries, books, and movies about World War 2. Or comic books. Or cartoons. Churchill is all over the place.

Maybe it's all because he's more idolized here than he is there.

If you go onto any of the satellite history channels, 50% seem to be about WW2. But I guess that these guys wouldn't ever watch them. As I said before, it is entirely possible that they could go through secondary education without doing the Second World War at all. Schools are very focused on coaching the students to get through their exams, and so if WW2 wasn't on the curriculum it wouldn't be covered at all.

Churchill won the Greatest Briton Ever competition they had a few years back, so I think he probably is idolized quite a lot overall, though I imagine the teenagers who got this wrong are more interested in the minor celebrity du jour than any bits of history.

"King of the 'oo?"

"The Britons."

"'Oo are the Britons?"

"We all are. We are all Britons. And I am your king."

"Well I didn't vote for you."

Well, its not that different here in America, where we scare our children into civic responsiblity with tales of the mythic and evil "George W. Bush" and how he singlehandedly ruined America because too many young people didn't vote. Some say that this boogeyman was based off a real politician, like Nader or somebody, but I don't believe it.

EDIT: Holy sh*t, he was REAL?!?

We're living in a time where stunts make good television and MTV is considered to be news.

We've seen people willing to sign a petition banning H2O because it causes more deaths than car accidents.
We've seen women willing to sign a petition to end women's suffrage.

Give them a few years, I'm sure we'll see a church devoted to the second coming of Harry Potter and a secret society called the Order of the Phoenix which has been in existence for hundreds of years.