No Churchill?

[dannoofthedead]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080204...historyoffbeat The flip side of this is that, in America, you could find just as many people who hear the names Winston Churchill and Sherlock Holmes and ask "Who?" People, supposedly with some form of grade school education, suck.

[MinionZombie]

Oh for the love of god ... thanks Blair and Brown, look where your "education, education, education" got these dim-witted numpties. Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez... Next thing they'll be saying is that Americans captured the Enigma machine and WW2 was won by Tom Hanks and Matt Damon ... and that Pearl Harbour was boring because of all the nurses shagging pilots.

[Terran]

Vietnam was lost because of drugs... Vietnam was lost because of drugs... Its kindof tragically funny...if you look at literature...a lot of our government horror type stories are no longer fiction...but are actually happening....but even with that ...the best reaction one can get out of a person is a *shrug*...

[Neil]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080204...historyoffbeat The flip side of this is that, in America, you could find just as many people who hear the names Winston Churchill and Sherlock Holmes and ask "Who?" People, supposedly with some form of grade school education, suck. Scary!!!

[capncnut]

Half of these dimwits that participate in polls are youngsters anyway and just look at them - mouthy, retarded little chavs that don't know their arse from their elbow. Check out Jade Goody for example, who IS representant of a fair number of kids nowadays, it's hardly surprising that some teens think Sherlock Holmes is real when you got a dumbass like that as an example of this generation. A similar poll thing was done on Sid Vicious a few years ago (who died in 1979 - recently) and a certain percentage of youngsters believe that he was responsible for the death of Princess Diana - talk about f**king retarded! It's on the introduction to The Filth and the Fury DVD, if you don't believe me.

[Mike70]

this one makes my brain hurt...i can see thinking that richard the lionheart was a myth because he lived about 900 years ago but churchill??? how can someone who died in 1965 (within the living memory of a huge percentage of the population) be considered a myth???? wow.

[MinionZombie]

how can someone who died in 1965 (within the living memory of a huge percentage of the population) be considered a myth???? Not to mention all the documented evidence, particularly relating to World War 2, which when I was at High School & Sixth Form at least, was one of about no more than 4 periods of history we were ever taught (and often at times when the German exchange students would be coming over, lol ... awkward )

[Kaos]

Everyone knows Churchill's are real. They are one of my favorite types of cigars. Anywhere from 7 X 47 to 7 x 52 in size. Here is one of my favorite brands (see 6th cigar down) : http://www.churchillsltd.com/product...roducts_id/155

[Chic Freak]

Because UKTV Gold is the most reliable source of sociological research I'm not saying people aren't dumb, but if you want the stats to prove it, I'd suggest checking out some recent academic journals or something rather than relying on a TV channel. It's unlikely that the research was carried out to a high standard, and therefore the results are probably neither very reliable nor valid.

[dannoofthedead]

Jay Leno does this wonderful bit called Jay Walking on the Tonight Show. People are ignorant no matter when or where they were bonr. Men and women in their 60's can't even answer some simple historic and current events questions. And the people teenage through early 30 make me want to puke. One girl, I assume a college student due to her age and the sorority sweater she was wearing, didn't know who the Americans fought during the Revolutionary War. Education seems to be taking a beating everywhere.

[SRP76]

They should have continued with the follow-up. I want to know who they think that is in the Yalta photo with Roosevelt and Stalin. I'll bet 50% say "Alfred Hitchcock?"

[AcesandEights]

Context, context, context. I'd love to get a good look at how the 'survey' was conducted, who they targeted, where they drew their participants from etc.

[SRP76]

How can it matter? "Was *insert name here* a real person, or was *insert name here* fictional?" Pretty hard to make excuses.

[dannoofthedead]

Yalta hell! Who out of those surveyed would know who Stalin and FDR were? "Yalta? Is that like some desert?" 2 years ago I would have found it hard to believe that anyone with a high school education (or equivalent) could possibly be so ignorant of a period in history that has been so heavily publicized and romanticized by the media since the turn of the century. Now, even the most educated of folks seem capable of rampant stupidity.

[Chic Freak]

Context, context, context. I'd love to get a good look at how the 'survey' was conducted, who they targeted, where they drew their participants from etc. Exactly. How can it matter? "Was *insert name here* a real person, or was *insert name here* fictional?" Pretty hard to make excuses. I know what you mean, it seems retarded, but how surveys like this are worded and carried out can actually make a huge difference to the results (this is why companies often sponsor researchers to carry out research about them- if they couldn't affect the results, there wouldn't be any point). Hence, "there are lies, there are damn lies, and then there are statistics!"