My daughter really, really, really (throw in a few more reallys for
accuracy) wants to go to Disney World. Scouting reports from several of her
preschool colleagues indicate that there is a large amount of princess
activity down there. And not just princesses - real princesses. She's seen
fake Cinderellas and Ariels - the royal equivalents of shopping mall Santas
- but now she's focused on engaging the real thing, and she's been told that
Disney World is where they hang their tiaras. So one day, probably very
soon, we'll be heading to Florida to meet the "real" princesses who, despite
presumably lavish wealth, charge parents $200 a day or more to take our
children to meet them.
I just hope that while we're there, Daddy can have some fun, too. For
instance, I would love to meet the "real" Winston Churchill.
You do know Churchill was make-believe, right? That, at least, is what
nearly a quarter of British teens recently told pollsters for the British TV
channel UKTV Gold. Meanwhile, 58 percent thought Sherlock Holmes was real,
and 47 percent called Richard the Lionheart a fictional character.
This is one of those news stories that pop up with some regularity,
highlighting how ignorant people on both sides of the Atlantic are about
their own civilization. It's a slightly more scientific confirmation of Jay
Leno's man-on-the-street "Jaywalking" segment, in which he asks passersby
brainteasers such as, "Where was the Vietnam War fought?" or, "When did the
War of 1812 take place?"
A survey of teenagers conducted by the National Constitutional Center found
more students able to name the Three Stooges (59 percent) than could name
the three branches of U.S. government (41 percent). A 1999 survey of
students at 55 elite colleges and universities found that 40 percent
couldn't place the U.S. Civil War in the correct half-century. Given that
the U.S. hasn't been around for five half-centuries yet, I wonder how many
guesses these students needed.
The civic ignorance of the American public is an old lament, a standby for
finger-wagging, chin-pulling pundits like yours truly in need of column
fodder. And it's probably true that it was ever thus, to some extent; that
the masses never had much use for historical dates and names. Though if you
read letters written by soldiers during the Civil War, it's hard not to
suspect that cultural literacy has been trending southward for a long time
(unless, of course, you think the Civil War only happened recently).