Study shows British youth have poor grasp of history

[JohnLocke]

Note to British youth: Columbus did not defeat the Armada
By Mark Rice-Oxley -- The Christian Science Monitor
August 12, 2004
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LONDON - He led British sailors to a stunning victory over the powerful Spanish Armada in 1588. He is renowned for his naval cunning. He is a true British hero.
He is Gandalf.
Well, not really. But in the minds of one out of every 20 British young adults, J.R.R. Tolkien's white-robed wizard has replaced Sir Francis Drake.
This and other wildly wrong answers in a recent survey here about British history (half of 16- to 34-year-olds did not know that the Battle of Britain took place during World War II), point to a staggeringly poor grasp of cultural heritage.
The survey is prompting noisy accusations about the dumbing down of the nation that gave the world such luminaries as William Shakespeare, Charles Babbage, and Stephen Hawking.
(...)
The problem is hardly Britain's alone. Across the pond, the US Department of Education reported in 2001 that more than half of high-schoolers thought the US fought World War II in partnership with Germany, Japan, or Italy. Sixty-five percent couldn't link the Boston Tea Party to the American Revolution.
Such ignorance is not new, either. In 1987, educator E.D. Hirsch created a storm with the publication of "Cultural Literacy," outlining essential facts that he thought educated Americans should - and by his estimate, didn't - know.
In Britain, not everyone subscribes to this view of a dumb and dumber country.
Professor Adamson says the students passing through his classes are more intelligent and articulate than their predecessors 10 years ago. Plenty of them know that Gandalf never got close to the Spanish Armada.
David Goodhart, editor of "Prospect," a high brow monthly, says intellectualism is alive and well in Britain.
"In Britain, we have always despised the idea of the preening expert who is not understood by the ordinary man," he says, "But we actually have a more thriving media, university, theater culture than Germany and other countries in continental Europe where there is a more formal respect for the intellectual."
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Read the rest here.