Sir Winston Churchill once said, “History will be kind to me for
I intend to write it.” Although he did indeed write, as well as
make, much history, it will be of no avail to him personally now
that he has been dropped from the official list of persons
required for study by English school students from the ages of 11
to 14.
In an effort to improve the minds of their youth, in lieu of
studying the man who was dubbed “The Greatest Briton of Them All”
in a 2002 BBC poll, they will instead concentrate on “debt
management, the environment and healthy eating.” That’s right. One
of the men most responsible for English still being spoken in
England is to be shunted into the dustbin of schoolroom history in
favor of more time to teach the kiddies about the evils of global
warming and red meat.
Churchill is not the only heavyweight to receive the historical
heave-ho, since Hitler, Gandhi, Stalin and Martin Luther King have
also been deemed unworthy of study. Of course, one can understand
the dropping of Hitler from the curriculum. After all, according to
certain American congressmen, there’s no reason to study him when
he is presently alive and well and living at 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue, U.S.A.
Officials say that lopping off trivial subjects like the War of
the Roses, the life of King Henry VIII and the study of French,
German and Spanish — languages that formed bonds of cooperation
with England’s neighbors — will provide room for students to learn
Russian, Chinese, Urdu and Arabic. Draw you own conclusions
here.
In the English department, Shakespeare has been spared,
as have contemporary authors such as Douglas Adams, a noted sci-fi
writer and a self-proclaimed “radical-atheist.” I point this out
because the curriculum goes on to say that it is “no longer
compulsory to teach the influences of the Bible, Arthurian legends
and Greek mythology.” It appears no accident that the Bible is
mentioned in the same breath as “legends” and “mythology.”
In the field of Geography, emphasis will be placed on “climate
change, the tsunami and the effects of buying cheap clothes on the
Third World,” while science classes will concentrate on subjects in
which all pre-teens should be well-versed: “in vitro fertilization,
stem cells, vivisection, nuclear energy and the moral and ethical
implications of science.”
All of this will no doubt serve to create a generation of
fresh-faced, self-hating, little Eurocrats, but very few
Englishmen; and almost none of the stripe of Winston Churchill. But
I’m sure that’s the point. Or it might be that it’s just another
case of the mediocre trying to elevate themselves by demoting the
exceptional. Or just maybe the anti-Churchillian concept of
appeasement is the goal. After all, try and imagine the following emanating from the pen of a
twenty-something English lad educated under today’s proposed
guidelines:
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on
its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous
in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic
apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident
habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of
commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers
of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and
refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity…Individual
Moslems may show splendid qualities…but the influence of the
religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.
Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and
proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central
Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not
that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science — the
science against which it had vainly struggled — the civilisation
of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient
Rome.
Disagree as one might with the young Churchill’s views on
Christianity, there is no question that he was eerily prophetic on
the subject of Islamism and, were he alive today, he would be
appalled by Western reticence in fighting the War on Terror.
Churchill is esteemed by some as the greatest statesman,
historian and orator of the English-speaking people. There are no
great orators today, especially in America. We have no oratory but
we have plenty of talk and most of it is of the mealy-mouth variety
as embodied by the new English curriculum.
But in this time of national peril, the Churchillian quality
most called for is his bullishness in defense of country when he
felt he had right on his side; the same sort presently and
thankfully displayed by Der Fuehrer in the White House.
