A Brief History…

ANOTHER UPDATE: No wonder the British teenagers don’t know any history. They are listening to the BBC.

I previously posted a bit about the loss of history in school curricula. I don’t expect much of American public schools anymore but Britain has a much longer history and I have found much more interest in such subjects as medical history in Britain than in the USA. That may be changing as British teenagers increasingly believe that historical figures are fictional and vice versa.

Despite his celebrated military reputation, 47 per cent of respondents dismissed the 12th-century crusading English king Richard the Lionheart as fictional.

More than a quarter (27 per cent) thought Florence Nightingale, the pioneering nurse who coaxed injured soldiers back to health in the Crimean War, was a mythical figure.

In contrast, a series of fictitious characters that have featured in British films and literature over the past few centuries were awarded real-life status.

King Arthur is the mythical figure most commonly mistaken for fact – almost two thirds of teens (65 per cent) believe that he existed and led a round table of knights at Camelot.

Twenty percent of British teens believed that Winston Churchill is a fictional character.

On the medical front, female Muslim medical students are refusing to scrub their forearms because of “modesty rules.”

Minutes of a clinical academics’ meeting at Liverpool University revealed that female Muslim students at Alder Hey children’s hospital had objected to rolling up their sleeves to wear gowns.

Similar concerns have been raised at Leicester University. Minutes from a medical school committee said that “a number of Muslim females had difficulty in complying with the procedures to roll up sleeves to the elbow for appropriate handwashing”.

No doubt Allah will prevent MRSA infections.

Thanks to Eric Blair for the tip to that story.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 9:18 am and is filed under History, medical history, medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.