Americans no longer monopolize stupidity

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Gandalf finds a place in British history

Press Association
Thursday August 5, 2004

A sizeable slice of younger Britons think Gandalf, Horatio Hornblower or Christopher Columbus was the hero of the English fleet's defeat of the Spanish Armada, a survey showed today.

Less than half identified Sir Francis Drake as a key figure in one of the most famous sea battles in British history, the poll for the BBC showed.

A third of 16 to 34-year-olds did not know that William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings, while more than a fifth of 16 to 24-year-olds thought Britain had been conquered by the Germans, the Americans or the Spanish.

The figures, released to mark the start of BBC Two's Battlefield Britain series on landmark conflicts in British history, left education traditionalists aghast at young people's lack of knowledge of their nation's past.

Ignorance, however, was not just confined to the young - 22% of pensioners failed to remember that the Romans conquered Britain, with one in 20 over-65s stating it was the Germans instead.

Of the 1,006 adults aged 16 and upward who took part, only half of all age groups knew that it was the Battle of the Boyne, in which Catholic King James II's troops were defeated by Protestant William III in 1690, that was celebrated each year on July 12 by Orangemen in Northern Ireland.

While 71% of over-65s got that question right, only 18% of 16 to 24-year-olds did so.

And 15% of 16 to 24-year-olds thought the Orangemen were actually celebrating victory at Helms Deep, the fictional battle that marked the climax of The Two Towers, the second novel in JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy.

This year saw saturation coverage of the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings, one of the decisive battles of World War Two.

But again, the survey showed widespread ignorance about when another key episode from that war took place.

Pollsters TNS found that 31% of all age groups were unable to say that the Battle of Britain happened during the second world war.

One in 10 over-65s got that one wrong, while only 51% of 16 to 24-year-olds got the answer right.

A fifth of 16 to 24-year-olds thought it occurred during the First World War and 12% said it happened 600 years earlier, during the Hundred Years War fought by England and France.

When it came to identifying who helped destroy the Spanish Armada in 1588, 13% of 16 to 24-year-olds credited Horatio Hornblower, CS Forester's fictional Royal Navy hero from the Napoleonic wars.

And a fifth said it Christopher Columbus, the Genoa-born adventurer who discovered the New World in 1492, while 6% thought it was Gandalf, the wizard from Tolkien's fantasy novels.

Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said of the survey: "It clearly shows that our state education system has got a lot to answer for.

"A grounding in national history is essential for all young people in order to understand the present. This is extremely shocking."

Last month, education watchdog Ofsted said that secondary schools spent too little time teaching teenagers about the British Empire and too much on Nazi Germany.

Time spent on the Empire as a topic could amount to one lesson a year for 11 to 14-year-olds - and almost nothing for GCSE pupils.

Battlefield Britain presenter Peter Snow said: "It's at once a shock and a challenge that so many people can be so wrong about some of the key moments in Britain's past.

"Battlefield Britain can put this right by giving viewers some of the most striking and vivid images yet seen of the violent events that shaped our history."

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McG, an actual post with a point. I am impressed. Our politics differ, but this is quite disgusting. I am ashamed of ignorance everywhere, and this does point to an extreme lack of proper education, yes? Or, perhaps a lack of funded education that is primarily bitched about by Liberals? Wink

I'm actually really curious about your thoughts on how to end this nonsense with education. My mother has been a teacher all her life, and is finding, in her old age, that the system is a complete mess. I hope we can discuss this without rhetoric. I do believe the world is getting dumber by the day.

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It's a lack of responsibilty and desire. People expect schools to be the parent/educator/role model/baby sitter instead of merely a place to get an education. Parents do not have the time or the desire to teach their children the importance of education and the contiuous downward spiral of expectations and standards have degraded the education system in such a way that I am not sure it will ever recover.

When I was in school, 70 was passing. Now, what is it, 55? If you failed a class, you went to summer school or repeated the grade. Today, failure is seen as such a threat to a kids self-esteem that it's hardly allowed. Excuses are made and personal responsibility is forgotten. It must be the schools fault.

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I had the serious luck of the draw to have great teachers through junior high and high school. My younger brother got a bad deal following behind me in the same school just when I was leaving, and all hell was breaking loose. They put him in private school, where he thrived, and then later, after he was gone, all sorts of trauma regarding sex scandals came out....I'm all for home-schooling myself.

I agree that kids need challenges, and personal attention so that a teacher can assess what sort of challenge would be best for them, but sadly, a lot of teachers these days just don't give a crap. Not all teachers, some are still fighting the good fight, but I concur that more parental involvement is absolutely neccessary.

Another thing that disturbs me is this decline in the grading standards. It's been brought down for high school, but raised for university, depending on the program. That just seems ridiculous to me.

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Hey McG and Cav.

I have watched for some time with dismay, the state of education in America. I have several ideas why things are in such a rotten state.

First, all these standardized tests are not allowing teachers to TEACH, but are forcing them to narrow their views toward getting the schools in a passing mode.

Next, I fear there is no impetus to learn. I'm not certain where that arises, but I think it might be the lackluster situation in many homes. I picked up the desire to learn by watching my parents' and sisters' eagerness.

As to the lack of knowledge in history, the past must be made relative to today and tomorrow. It must be made exciting and provocative. I watched a presentation on Christopher Columbus on the discovery channel, and it was totally intriguing that he may not be who we think he was.

I had good elementary teachers, and that gave me the proper thrust. Hey, I could go on and on, there's simply not enough space here. <smile>

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I come from a family of teachers and have seen what a good teacher can do for a student. I have also seen what a bad teacher can do... my high school algebra teacher told us if we needed help to go ask someone else because he was to busy preparing for his doctorate. On e interesting point I have read is that the teachers of today are the bad students of yesterday. Martin Gross, in his book The Conspiracy of Ignorance, claims that "the average college bound student scores 50 points higher on SAT's than most of their teachers." He more or less blames stupid teachers for stupid students.

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If the students are scoring higher than their teachers, wouldn't that point out that both the teachers and the system are doing a good job?

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In the 40's and 50's both the UK and America (including Canada) were educating their children. I can't speak for the UK and Canada, though recent articles like this suggest things have slipped there too, but beginning in the 60's, accelerating in the 70's, and becoming commonplace by the 80's and 90's, U.S. schools have given much more attention to indoctrinating instead of educating the children. Once we put more importance on how the children were feeling instead of what the children were learning, a whole lot of real education went into the crapper.

Dedicated American parents are dealing with the problem by shelling out huge sums for private education for their kids, or they are home schooling. The latest statistics I've seen is that the home schoolers are getting the best education.

I keep beating the drum for common sense to return to the public school system so that all our kids can get a decent education. I have a fair number of teachers in my family too and they concur with this by the way.

Disclaimer: There are a few really good public schools still out there. But I believe they are in a tiny minority.

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Here is a passage I found from the book:

..the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) ... is taken by those who intend to do graduate work in one of eight fields: business, engineering, health sciences, humanities, life sciences, social sciences, physical sciences, and education.

"Quantitative means [average math scores] are lower in Education ... than in other fields," the GRE reports dispassionately. In other words, test-takers seeking to enter the field of education came in the absolute bottom of the eight specialties, with an average score of 499, versus 689 for the leader on the quantitative test, the engineers.

Engineers might be expected to do better on such hard skills as handling numbers. But the disheartening results was that the masters of the slide rule beat the teachers and teacher-hopefuls in the verbal exam as well, by a solid 29 points.

How did teachers do in all three areas of the GRE test - verbal, quantitative, and analytical? Overall, the combined average score for the 1.1 million test-takers was 1,577. The teachers came in last with 1,477, while the physical scientists were at the top with 1,779, followed by the engineers with 1,762. (Incidentally, the scientists also topped the educators on the verbal scale.)

Elementary school teachers and teacher-candidates seeking a graduate degree score the poorest among those in education, except for administrators, which is a revealing surprise. Elementary teachers score 33 points below the mean on the verbal test, 56 points lower in the quantitative test, and 32 points below the mean on the analytical test.

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At the undergraduate level, I was overwhelmed by the 'streaming' process, an interesting but completely misguided approach to funnel students into a middle ground, ignoring the bright ones, and giving the slow ones a chance. As heartfelt as it was, mediocrity is as mediocrity does.

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Is what you're saying JP is that those who can do, and those who can't teach?

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That is what the book is saying... I just think it is something to consider.

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There is some truth to it I think. But I also think there are some very very good, dedicated, conscientious teachers out there. I will be backing ANY politician who will make a conscientious effort to get the schools out of the social engineering buisness and back to basics and let the teachers teach.

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Let the teachers teach?

But that would mean history teachers encouraging young people to use their brains and find out about how the world came to be how it is today. That is an extremely dangerous concept, young people are known to be naive and idealistic, they might even want to try and change things.

Knowledge is power, its best to keep the masses ignorant in case they get ideas above their station. A daily tabloid diet of football sex and celebrity news is enough.

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It should make sense that the elementary school teachers don't score as high in a graduate level academic exam than do the business and science people. People who excel in research and writing tests are quite likely the same people who aren't as good with people.

Elementary teachers don't need to understand rocket science to teach elementary students, what they need to understand is children. Any adult can do elementary student level work, it's the ability and desire to motivate and inspire the children to learn that is the most important thing in elementary teachers.

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The other side of the discussion going on here is that the kids aren't scoring as well as they used to in school...

The kids are exposed to so much more information now that they don't know as much about history as they used to. They won't know as much about a lot of "core" things as they used to. But they've learned how to use computers, and learned about dinosaurs, airplanes, global warming...

There are just a lot more subjects out there to learn about, which means that the kids aren't all learning the same things...

I do believe that teaching children about history and literature is extremely important - but a number of people feel that teaching children 'job-ready skills' is what's important.

Early (meaning pre-college) schooling should be about making smart, interested, and well-rounded people who know how to ask "why" and then look for the anwers...post-secondary can refine their technical skills to make them 'job-ready.'

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Jer, the only problem with that theory is that all kids have more of the world to learn than I did as a kid, but 30 or 40 or 50 more years of history isn't that tough. A lot of the Asian kids, especially the Japanese, run circles around our U.S. kids in science and math. I wonder how well they would score on the quizzes the UK and US kids essentially flunk?

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Fox,

I don't mean that the kids are scoring worse in history itself because there's more history to learn...

I mean when you were going to school there were probably 5 TV stations and the world was very isolated.

With the invention of cable TV and the internet and new information coming from every direction every day at an ever increasing rate, students are studying things other than history and are becoming interested in other things. There is more info going in to their heads than their ever was before. And there is less common knowledge between a school in California and New York than there was before.

Because of computers and calculators I'm sure a lot of students don't worry about math the way they used to, cause they know they won't need it in 'real life'.

150 years ago everyone who went to school would have tested really well on the bible, nowadays the kids won't test well at all, it doesn't mean that today's kids are stupider, they are just learning other things. That's my point.

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Jer wrote:

Because of computers and calculators I'm sure a lot of students don't worry about math the way they used to, cause they know they won't need it in 'real life'.

There have been many times I need to do math in real life and didn't have a calculator in my pocket. What are they going to do then? What else are they studying...MTV? I agree that there is a lot more going on today then 50 years ago but you need to learn the basics as a foundation to what ever else you want to learn about. Saying you don't need to worry about math because of calculators is just fostering lazyness.

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JP,

I wasn't refering to 'math' meaning adding, subtraction, multiplication, and division...

I meant highschool math, the hard stuff.

I'd be willing to bet that a lot of kids are watching the discovery channel a lot cause it's got really interesting stuff on it.

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LOL, believe it or not Jer, a lot of us 'old timers' had quite a bit of interesting stuff to distract us from our studies. And we were just as distractable then as kids are now. Still most of us could put our highschool diploma up against most four-year college degrees today and we were better educated.

The difference is the teachers didn't give much of a tinker's dam about how we felt about it or whether it wasn't interesting. We were expected to learn it. So we did.

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Americans no longer monopolize stupidity

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