The what?
It was only in the mid-nineties when the statement on the back of the BYB was explained to me:
How could we forget that in 1812 the two greatest democracies in the world made war on each other.
I'd always assumed that it referred to Russia and France but couldn't work it out because Russia obviously wasn't a democracy in 1812.
The war is barely a footnote and certainly not covered in the curriculum. From my experience of teaching secondary history, British schools cover:
The Romans
The Black Death
The Tudors
The English Civil War and Restoration
Industrial Revolution and Civil Rights movement
The Victorians
World War One
World War Two
When you get up to 15-16 and choose GCSEs the options include:
Medicine through History
Nazi Germany
The American West
World War Two
Post War UK
As an aside, when I was teaching the American West, I had one of the best answers ever.
The question was: Sum up Custer's position at the Little Big Horn
The answer was: Custer left his gatling guns at camp to move faster. He split a small group of men into three and sent them to places they couldn't support each other. Then he charged a couple of hundred men into thousands of Souix, some of who had repeating rifles when his men had single shot guns and crappy ammunition that jammed. Once he realised the situation he dismounted and waited for help instead of running away. Basically, Custer was fucked.
A concise if fairly inaccurate assessment.
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