Defending the Truth

Schools told to dump Churchill and Hitler from history lessons
by LAURA CLARK - More by this author »Last updated at 10:36am on 13th July 2007

Wartime hero: Winston Churchill

Secondary schools will strip back the traditional curriculum in favour of lessons on debt management, the environment and healthy eating, ministers revealed.

Even Winston Churchill no longer merits a mention after a drastic slimming-down of the syllabus to create more space for "modern" issues.

Along with Hitler, Gandhi, Stalin and Martin Luther King, the former prime minister has been dropped from a list of key figures to be mentioned in history teaching.

This means pupils may no longer hear about his stirring speeches during the Second World War, when he told Parliament that defeating Hitler would be Britain's "finest hour".

The only individuals now named in guidance accompanying the curriculum are anti-slavery campaigners Olaudah Equiano and William Wilberforce.

The omission of Churchill added to a growing row over Labour reforms to secondary education - the most radical since the national curriculum was introduced in 1988.

Critics warned traditional subject disciplines were being stripped of key content and used to promote fashionable causes and poorly-defined "life skills".

They said that while the two World Wars remain on the curriculum as broad topics the failure to specify teaching on Churchill - while naming other individuals - downgraded his importance.

The move was called "madness" by his grandson Nicholas Soames, the Tory MP.

"It is absurd. I expect he wasn't New Labour enough for them," he said.

Tory spokesman on children Michael Gove added: "Winston Churchill is the towering figure of twentieth century British history.

Debt management is a good subject to learn in school, but history is a critical subject.

This is a VERY bad idea!

Well i don't know... What good does it do my kid to know about CHurchill instead of debt management?

Note the curriculum doesn't exclude history lessons. It just re-prioritizes. It is just simply not important any longer to waste valuable columns in school books lauding the leaders of the past?

A child of 5 today has more factual knowledge in his brain than Churchill had in his whole life. Why then must he be taught to be in AWE of a leader who just happened to be PM when the nutjob nazis invaded.

I support the attempt to restructure. However knowing mankind it will screw up a lot to begin with. But that's how we learn i guess.

I disagree. In today's modern world a lesson in dept management goes much, much further than a history lesson!

Most Americans are in debt up to their eyeballs causing stress within the basic family structure. Bad for the country, bad for the world.

Screw history... the victors always write it poorly anyway.

I suppose it would depend on how much history is being deleted. I agree that teahing debt management IS a good idea, but I guess that BALACE is the key here as with everything else.

Why can't they do both??

Teach debt management as part of maths and keep the history lessons!

Churchill:
English Statesman and co-conspirator of the selling out of Eastern Europe at Yalta to Russia & Communism, together with fellow Freemasons Roosevelt and Stalin, who wrote in his autobiography: "I could have prevented the war!" (W.W.II) He said at his death bed:
"What a fool I have been!"

FAMOUS LAST WORDS, STATEMENTS, QUIPS, QUOTES AND DYING TESTIMONIALS OF FAMOUS AND INFAMOUS DYING politicians, statesmen, clergy, artists, inventors, writers, philosphers, communists, scientists, criminals, soldiers, nobility, normal people, descripti