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Monday, March 9, 2009

Education, Education, Education.


A story that has been talked about a lot today has really got me shaking my head. I think it has evoked feelings of both disbelief and shame; Shame that some school pupils in the UK think that Auschwitz is either some type of beer, or a religious festival.

More than 1.3 million people perished in the Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War, but a recent survey of 1,000 high school children aged between 11 - 16 revealed that 25% of them had no idea about Auschwitz.

Of the 1,000 pupils 10% did not know what it was, 8% thought it was a country bordering Germany, 2% thought it was a beer, 2% said a religious festival and the remaining 1% said it was a type of bread!

Looking at the bigger picture, there are around 4.5 million children that fit into this age group within the UK, and this potentially means that a staggering 90,000 children could wrongly identify Auschwitz as a type of beer.

I think it is such a tragic reflection of the British Education system. It is a crime in itself that the history of World War Two is already being lost. We have to remember that this is still history from living memory. People are still around today who were there, who can still recollect horrific events in such tiny detail.

Everyday we are doing things and creating our own history, but surely these statistics cannot be ignored. I just want to know what is going on in modern history classes today that makes the events of World War Two missable.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good afternoon,
what you're writing here is true. The loss of good education concerns me as much as it should everyone. But actually I think it concerned every generation, that with the next generation it will get worse. The western countries have come to the edge, propably it will go downhill from here.
Ok, just wanna show you, that you're not the only one worried :) All you can do is to take care of your kids education - use that "power".

Can I invite you to my blog? inceptum.wordpress.com


Cheers from Germany (not Auschwitz),
David

Bubble said...

Hello David,

Thanks for stopping by and leaving your opinion, it's very much appreciated.

:)

 
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