This Really and Truly Galls Me

Michelle Malkin caught a story that truly sticks in my craw: in Britain, education bureaucrats have proposed striking from the curriculum the requirement that students be taught about Sir Winston Churchill; they also proposed that more "relevant" topics such as global-warming be taught. Needless to say, Churchill's grandson, Tory MP Nicholas Soames, was furious; he said that “It’s total madness. The teaching of history is incredibly important. If people do not seem to care about the country in which they live, the reason is that they don’t know much about it.” I entirely agree with you, sir.

According to the Sun, though, Winny isn't the only figure of historical import facing the axe: off the mandatory list are Stalin, Hitler, Gandhi, MLK, the War of the Roses (probably an unheard-of event to my American readers), Elizabeth I, and Henry VIII. So perhaps facing the axe was a bad pun.

This simply forces the question of what will students be taught in their history classes? All of these figures (save perhaps MLK) are crucial in the development of modern Britain, and one would think indispensable components of a true education. The Sun doesn't highlight exactly why WSC should be cut, I'd be interested to know. Perhaps because tenacious fighters who doggedly insisted that Britain never never never give up, or noted that "an appeaser is one that feeds the crocodile, hoping it will eat him last," or who rightly said that a fanatic is one who "won't stop talking and won't change the subject" might complicate the process of British submission to Islam. You know, restore their stiff upper lip and all. I'm truly aghast.