Should Winston Churchill be celebrated as much as he is?

Should schools also acknowledge the acts of racism by Churchill and slurs he used. The Bengal famine he contributed towards by taking their food to feed English soldiers during the war when the British still had control of India/Pakistan/Bangladesh.
What are your thoughts?

Not sure why his racism is overly relevant?

Racism has to be relevant but , in any case, why put any leader on a pedestal to the point where one assumes that in order to be great he/she must not have any personal flaws or weaknesses?
The second point is an interesting one of a flawed argument regarding racism: nice, talented white people with responsible jobs could not be racist! But why not? This is where debates on racism often go off track. Winston Churchill was a grear orator and leader but he was also a racist. One cannot change history.

My point was more so what if he was a racist? It was rather a given for the time and it is utterly ridiculous to start judging historical figures through a modern moral framework.

Complex bloke and I have complex feelings towards him

Like most of us he was neither fully good nor fully bad

There is a difference between Winston Churchill the WW2 Prime Minister and the peacetime Churchill. We owe a great debt to him as wartime leader.

Not all schools do. Slavery.
Hitler. Not all schools do.

Why should the people who choose History have to shoulder the burden for all; the stem students and everyone else who did not.
Options are much broader and have thousands of years to cover.

Did you choose to do GCSE or A level History and if not why not?

You still dont get the idea that attitudes and norms were different 100 years ago than they exist today.
As I said Churchill is not a very important part of any GCSE or even any A level option I know of.
Yes you can study his place in History and some of his more controversial actions, but that is part of history . You would know that if you had actually studied it.

You seem to have a very one sided agenda that aims to tear down his reputation, except it is one sided and you have a woeful inability to see it in context or understand what the skills and purpose of teaching History is.

These threads happen about once every 3 months, they make me want to vomit as you expect some sort of penance for people that existed 100 years ago as judged by todays standards. If you think Churchill was bad, then am sure you would have much preferred to live under the Nazis or Stalin, then you would be happy. How do you think you would have been treated then? Ask your mum. Is she a History teacher? What does she teach?

I’m now on the Year 2 of A levels and I recall studying history at GCSE level. We learnt a ton of irrelevant history from around the world including the Cold War (mostly the Asian fronts e.g. Korea and Vietnam). Why should we learn those things when we haven’t properly covered British history? The only British part of history I remember was Queen Elizabeth I.

Racism is not justified. You cannot just say attitudes were different 100 years ago.

My point was more so what if he was a racist? It was rather a given for the time and it is utterly ridiculous to start judging historical figures through a modern moral framework.

This. I think it's too simplistic to label Churchill [and most people in history for that matter] as 'good' or 'bad'. There are certainly actions and views he held which were morally dubious but at the same time was one of the first people in politics to see the threat of Nazism for what it was and in terms of WW2 was prepared to make the right decisions at the right time. I don't agree with holding Churchill up as an unquestioned hero, but just focusing on his bad points misses a large part of the picture as well.

Then you completely missed the point of learning History.

Attitudes and norms were different 100 years ago are you saying people thought the same and the world operated in the same manner as they do in 2019?

GCSE is different from A level presumably you havent done A level?


Why was the cold war relevant? Because it dominated the world from the 1940s to the 1990s? Being on the edge of nuclear destruction seems a pretty important issue.

Why was Vietnam important? Because it showed the changing world and attitude to war? the bringing to its knees of a super power? Emergence of civil rights?

If English History was so important for you then, presumably you took it to A level or you have continued your A level studies outside of school?

History is even more about learning the skills as any set of facts.

isn’t he a dog

With that argument then you can also justify hitlers actions because he wanted to get rid of the treaty of versialles because of the effect it was having on germany and it's economy. along side trying to fight for his country he was also being racist and killing innocent people. hold on, who elese did that? churchill was fighting for britain, saving britain yet at the same time because of him, millions pf bengalis died from the bengal famine, they starved to death. sp using your argument, spmeone could just as well justify hitler

Victor mentality from WW2 makes many people gloss over his flaws and terrible actions throughout his life throughout the bloody history of the Empire, meaning many, especially the older generations will refuse to stomach anything which colours his image as a God-sent saviour of Britain/the world or any facts to the contrary

I think this is untrue. It depends on perspective and as quoted numerous times on this thread he wasnt perfect, but was in fact a complex character.
His contribution to this country, for this country still outweighs the negatives. Think of the world we would live in if the UK had lost.

You just don’t get the point do you? GCSE history should focus mainly on British history, funny how we didn’t learn a single thing about Winston Churchill or King Henry VIII in our GCSE curriculum but have to learn about Vietnam and Korea which has almost no relevance to Britain, the Cold War was just about western interventionism in conflicts abroad.

I don’t mind world history be taught but the curriculum should be majority focused on British history which it currently isn’t. And yes history is very good for developing analytical skills as well as judging the reliability of sources. I study biology, chemistry and geography at the moment as I have no interest in studying history in detail. In nearly all the other countries history lessons are based on their own country’s history not random bits from countries around the world. Our history lessons should especially focus on the evils that we are responsible for rather than glorifying a dictatorship (monarchy) or the endless bias in favour of westerners

We still learn about slavery. that was 100 uears ago.
we still learn abput hitler and how evil he was. that was 100 years ago. That's the whole point of history. You look and learn about the past. Not everyone takes GCSE i know but for those who do, why isnt it taught? If not taught then in textbooks. but you dont see it. it seems quite 1 sided tbh. he called indians dirty rats and said about the bengal famine that they should stop breeding like animals. race aside, in the min 1900s during the 2 weeks of smog, he was a cause of that. he told people to burn anything to keep warm and by this smog was formed. during this time people especially young pr quite old dies as they were to weak to handle the fumes. I have done my research. maybe i havent done it in history lessons at school but i hace done my research.

Are you Indian by any chance?
You dont have to justify Hitler. I can see why Indians would prefer that he won but am afraid you would find the amount of Indians enslaved and exterminated would have been rather high.
Hitler had pros and cons depending on perspective.
By most norms though starting a conflict which resulted in 70m+ people dying and systematic genocide was rather frowned upon even in the 1940s.

It's annoying watching people like you try and take the moral high ground over different issues while you support the suffering and enslavement of billions of animals. Have a look at yourself before you morally judge others.