This is a question which a 16 year-old girl studying for her GCSEs put to her classmates. This girl is at one of the top 100 private schools in Britain.
The school, like many others, now emphasises the sciences. It is compulsory there to do three separate science GCSEs. I think some of them are international GCSEs which are more difficult than ordinary GCSEs. So there is no doubting that this girl knows plenty about science. But history is not a compulsory GCSE at this school. Nor, of course, is the Christian religion. And even in the lower classes, the time devoted to religions and philosophies is spread among plenty of subjects including Islam, Buddhism and so on.
It is therefore not so surprising that this 16-year-old at a top school wonders whether Hitler - who wanted rid of the Jews - killed Jesus, who was a Jew. She just has not been taught much about history or Christianity.
The fashion for science over the humanities has, I suggest, gone too far.
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Education
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"this 16-year-old at a top school wonders whether Hitler - who wanted rid of the Jews - killed Jesus"
Alarming that she is apparently ignorant of Adolf Hitler's career as one of the cinematic comedy greats of the 20th Century. His "Great Dictator" was a incisive lampoon of Charlie Chaplin's rise to power & his threat to western democracy. Or was that Pontius Pilate? Someone, anyway.
Posted by: Hedonist at May 19, 2010 04:48 PM