what do they teach in schools these days

Sat at the office and talking weird laws and i mentioned the queen not allowed enter the house of commons rule saying it was of a Cromwellian nature.

One lad the youngest in the office is 20 turned round and said "whats Cromwellian." My reply was to say Oliver Cromwell.

To which he said never heard of him. I was flabbergasted. He's been out of schooling less than two years and has lived his whole life in Britain and he's never heard of Oliver Cromwell.

Then the second youngest person on the team who’s 21 piped up and said he's never heard of him either, but thought he had something to do with Oliver Twist. I nearly banged my head off the desk.

How can two intelligent educated people not have heard about one of the most influential leaders in your history?

I was seriously stunned.

How can papers like the Fail and the Sun moan about the eroding of British culture when some people don’t even know your own history?

So out of curiosity has anyone else not heard of Oliver Cromwell, or Shakespeare, or even Churchill?

Reply 1

kpwxx

20

This seems odd, I'm sure they MUST have learned about him in school... we did it in year 4. Maybe they have just forgotten.

Reply 2

kamc

15

They're probably just thick

Reply 3

concubine

17

I never had to learn anything about Cromwell in school.

Pretty much everything I know about history is from reading by myself, without that I'd only know about the Victorian era, WW2 and a load of misinformed BS about the Romans.

whos Cromwell

I don't remember ever studying Cromwell (alhtough I know who he is of course), we might have studied him a bit in about Year 3. The majority of history I did consisted of the Victorians, the Tudors, and WW1 - then we did bits on the Romans/Egyptians/Vikings. We never really studied any British history pre-1066 or from after the Tudors to before Queen Victoria - most of the history I know comes from stuff like Horrible Histories.

Reply 6

AshDUOL

I've heard the name and know he is important (for something...), but in my primary school the emphasis was very much on maths, literacy and science - geography and history were very much pushed to the back.

I'm 18 so I was in primary 1996-2003.

Reply 7

im so academic

15

silverbolt

Sat at the office and talking weird laws and i mentioned the queen not allowed enter the house of commons rule saying it was of a Cromwellian nature.

One lad the youngest in the office is 20 turned round and said "whats Cromwellian." My reply was to say Oliver Cromwell.

To which he said never heard of him. I was flabbergasted. He's been out of schooling less than two years and has lived his whole life in Britain and he's never heard of Oliver Cromwell.

Then the second youngest person on the team who’s 21 piped up and said he's never heard of him either, but thought he had something to do with Oliver Twist. I nearly banged my head off the desk.

How can two intelligent educated people not have heard about one of the most influential leaders in your history?

I was seriously stunned.

How can papers like the Fail and the Sun moan about the eroding of British culture when some people don’t even know your own history?

So out of curiosity has anyone else not heard of Oliver Cromwell, or Shakespeare, or even Churchill?

That's British education for you! :h:

Where students are taught to the test and not taught to learn.

What can you do really? :dontknow:

Reply 8

easter_bunny

13

I dropped History at the end of year 9 and in 10 years of History lessons (or however long it was) I must have studied the Tudors about 5 times. So, unfortunately, I'm really not suprised that no one knows anything, including me.

Reply 9

Blankblankblankq

9

I know the name, but I've never studied his life, or his influence. I feel kinda stupid now though, so I'll go learn something about him :smile:

Reply 10

blacklistmember

18

joey!

whos Cromwell

i was waiting for this :rofl:

Reply 11

N!*

19

I know of him because his name comes up in the Morrissey song Irish Blood, English Heart...

Oh, is he why we have bonfire night?

Reply 12

Becky21

9

im so academic

That's British education for you! :h:

Where students are taught to the test and not taught to learn.

What can you do really? :dontknow:

What happened to the Bieber love?

Reply 13

Tabers

15

I haven't studied Cromwell but I've heard of him. The other two I've studied. It's because there is so much variaty in what modules can be chosen to teach once you get to GCSE. In history at GCSE I studied the Russian Revolution and also some british history from around the first world war. So far at A level I've studied the French Revolution and radicalism in Britain. Now I'm doing my personal study and so we get to choose whatever we want to look at so I'm doing Boudica but people are doing things from all of history. So I suppose it depends on what the school decides to teach.

Reply 14

laura94

13

silverbolt

Sat at the office and talking weird laws and i mentioned the queen not allowed enter the house of commons rule saying it was of a Cromwellian nature.

One lad the youngest in the office is 20 turned round and said "whats Cromwellian." My reply was to say Oliver Cromwell.

To which he said never heard of him. I was flabbergasted. He's been out of schooling less than two years and has lived his whole life in Britain and he's never heard of Oliver Cromwell.

Then the second youngest person on the team who’s 21 piped up and said he's never heard of him either, but thought he had something to do with Oliver Twist. I nearly banged my head off the desk.

How can two intelligent educated people not have heard about one of the most influential leaders in your history?

I was seriously stunned.

How can papers like the Fail and the Sun moan about the eroding of British culture when some people don’t even know your own history?

So out of curiosity has anyone else not heard of Oliver Cromwell, or Shakespeare, or even Churchill?

I learnt about him in year 7! Maybe they just didn't pay attention.

Reply 15

Kash:)

15

LOL what idiots. It's like my brother having no idea who Chantelle Houghton is, I mean like durrrrrh.

Reply 16

Sir_Vile_Minds

2

silverbolt

So out of curiosity has anyone else not heard of Oliver Cromwell, or Shakespeare, or even Churchill?

I was reading an article about the (now not so) new Basildon sign and went onto a profile of some 16/17 year purely because of how stupid his comment was.

Anyway, I read through the threads he posted on and there was one about the 4th plinthin Traf Square and which influential person should occupy it.

There were many suggestions of people like Churchill, Locke (I think), Nightingale etc. This kid said he had never heard of them and said that history is not important to the country and that current celebs should be on it i.e. Beckham.

I wanted to hurt him nicely however, I'm not low enough to join the Sun's social networking :puke:

N!*

I know of him because his name comes up in the Morrissey song Irish Blood, English Heart...

Oh, is he why we have bonfire night?

Na, he wasn't keen on bonfires (or Christmas or bear baiting or football).

Reply 18

Bunkd

1

To be fair, GCSE and A-level History are in considerable detail, and require a lot of knowledge to get high grades.

Unfortunately, particularly lower down the school, pretty much all of history is about how bad living conditions were for the poor during the Victorian times (probably due to my upbringing under labour), completely ignoring the greatness of our Empire. I don't think the Empire was mentioned once throughout my primary education. It is honestly cripplingly embarrassing.

Cromwell was a tool in any case.