I think this is really becoming a problem
When PBS premiered Ken Burns' The War back in the fall, I heard him in interviews say that he made this because a large percentage of high school graduates think we fought WWII with Germany and against the Russians. I think people who didn't live through any of the Cold War think we were always enemies with Russia, so of course we were against them in WWII. However, it's still not a good thing -- not at all.
Today I see that we aren't alone in being ignorant of important events in our own history: 1 in 4 Britons Think Winston Churchill Never Existed. I find it interesting but sad that people think Churchill, Cleopatra and Sir Walter Raleigh, to name a few, were made up for movies and books, but think Sherlock Holmes is real.
Sigh.
Today I see that we aren't alone in being ignorant of important events in our own history: 1 in 4 Britons Think Winston Churchill Never Existed. I find it interesting but sad that people think Churchill, Cleopatra and Sir Walter Raleigh, to name a few, were made up for movies and books, but think Sherlock Holmes is real.
Sigh.
Labels: history
2 Comments:
At 1:42 PM,
Suz said…
Have you ever run up on a Holocaust Denialists? I did *once* and it made my head spin, especially since my history teacher (in high school) had her father's memorabilia from WWII and he was in one of the troops that liberated a camp.
The Winston Churchill thing is right up there with the people who think that think the Diary of Anne Frank is a fictional work.
It makes my head hurt very very badly (and that much more annoyed when I have to pay my school district taxes)
At 6:36 PM,
Mindy said…
I've actually been ACCUSED of being a Holocaust Denialist! Why? Because I'm a bit of a revisionist historian and people don't like that -- you know, like there's some evidence that "The Maine" blew up because of a smoldering coal fire inside the ship, not because of a Spanish mine. We went to war because of that incident so people don't want to hear that. I said that, and somebody accused me of being one of those revisionists who changes everything and thinks the Holocaust never happened. Talk about being offended! I was pissed! I never said that, nor do I believe it one bit. Just because I don't believe that all the history I was taught in elementary school is the exact truth doesn't mean I just assume everything was wrong.
It's so sad that so many people have no understanding (or simply don't care) of what came before us and how we got into some of our current predicaments.
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