History lesson

By Oliver Goggi

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HISTORY... who needs it Not our school children it seems. A recent survey of secondary school pupils uncovered some truly amazing finds. According to some of our nation's youth, it was Hitler who led Britain to victory in the Second World War, not Winston Churchill, and as for which century�the�First World War was fought in ... well, almost a quarter of pupils�didn't know!

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With barely 50% of secondary school pupils taking�history to GCSE level, it seems history is the latest victim of the schoolyard bullies. The survey, commissioned by educational publishers Osprey, highlighted the alarming number of pupils uneducated about key British historical events.

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Half of the pupils surveyed didn't realise that Oliver Cromwell was a key figure in the English Civil War, while one in six thought he was something to do with the Battle of Hastings.� Furthermore, a third did not know who the English fought at Hastings; some even thinking it was the Scots!

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The survey, which covered key historical events from the Roman occupation of Britain right up to the Second World War, concluded that history was being squeezed out of the national curriculum, with many pupils deciding to take 'easier' alternatives, such as geography.�

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Professor O'Neill, editor of educational textbooks at Osprey, commented that an awful lot of students gain their knowledge of history from films, such as Gladiator and Braveheart, which often give an inaccurate story of events.�His comments�are clearly reflected in the fact that 30 of the 200 pupils surveyed thought that Sir Edmund Blackadder was an historical figure, rather than a television character, and a quarter thought Horatio Hornblower was a real person too.

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