Fourth of Brits think Churchill was myth

Here's a story about a recent poll taken in England. It lists a number of real historical figures that the people thought were fictional. Instead, they thought fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes were actually real. It's kind of disturbing, if you think about it. What are their schools teaching people?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080204/od ... oryoffbeat

I read an equally disturbing article in the New York Times today about the ignorance of teenagers over basic history and literature. Fortunately, the full text is online...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/us/27 ... ref=slogin

Thoul, I agree with you. In both England and America, and probably other countries as well, just what are we teaching kids anymore?

Thoul, the Churchill bit of that article you linked was absolutely hilarious! Although for my own sake, I must correct you on the title of your topic; at the bottom of the Yahoo! news page, it shows that their numbers come from only three-thousand people, not even close to the whole of the country. Regardless, I still found this to be quite sad... after I managed to suppress the laughter!

EDIT: Ah, sorry, forgot to respond to the question...
I completely agree with Caged Wolf on this one; be you a Brit, American, Pole, Cambodian, etc. your natural state in this world is that of ignorance. Whether or not you stay that way is somewhat determined by your enviroment, (whether you were raised to value such knowledge or not) but ultimately, (pure opinion here) I feel it comes down to the individual and how much they themselves value being politically/historically savvy. This actually falls under the old Sociologist's debate on Nature vs. Nurture and what decides a child's personality and how they behave in society. I myself always liked to lean towards the "Nature" side, but evidence suggests that it's really a near-perfect mixture of both, so... meh... (I'm terrible at writing conclusions!).

The world is slowly getting more separated, There are the highly intelligent. And then the "others" XD

Interesting article, Thoul. Shocking too. It is shocking that people today know so little of history - past, present, and probably holds true for the future stuff too. Well, it's probably not just history, but other subjects as well. One would think given all the schools and places of knowledge, plus the easy assess of online knowledge, etc., that we would be the smartest, most well-informed, species around, but I suppose that is not always the case. I'm not saying, I know it all, because I certainly don't, but I would have absolutely known who Churchill was without a doubt. Scary.

I hope the poll really means "quarter of Brits like to screw with pollsters".

I can understand mistakenly thinking Sherlock Holmes was real, try doing the same with Tom Sawyer in the US. The Churchill thing is baffling though.

hugues wrote:

I hope the poll really means "quarter of Brits like to screw with pollsters".

Yeah, I'd considered the same. Knowing my somewhat sarcastic nature, It's likely if someone asked me such a question I'd respond just as a fourth of everyone else did, (If I knew it wasn't to be published...).

hugues wrote:

I can understand mistakenly thinking Sherlock Holmes was real, try doing the same with Tom Sawyer in the US. The Churchill thing is baffling though.

It's actually about 750 people who 'supposedly' believe Churchill to be the work of textbook-fiction; Gold, (television station) only surveyed 3000 people, so the title is misleading...

hugues wrote:

I can understand mistakenly thinking Sherlock Holmes was real, try doing the same with Tom Sawyer in the US.

Yeah, I can only wonder at what response that would result in regarding the Tom Sawyer thing. It would be an interesting survey, I'm sure.

Reno wrote:

Although for my own sake, I must correct you on the title of your topic; at the bottom of the Yahoo! news page, it shows that their numbers come from only three-thousand people, not even close to the whole of the country.

That's how these polls work, even in the US. They survey a small number of people for "representative sample" of the national population. If there were a poll that claimed 50% of Americans thought Tom Sawyer was a real person, it would really only be 50% of about a thousand people.

But in this case I actually just borrowed the title from the article headline, which said about the same thing.

I know that's how they work, it was just really insulting to hear it as 25% of the whole!