r/europe • u/MarktpLatz Lower Saxony (Germany) • Feb 21 '17

What do you know about... the UK?

This is the sixth part of our ongoing weekly series about the countries of Europe. You can find an overview here.

Todays country:

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

The UK is the second most populous state in the EU. Famous for once being the worlds leading power, reigning over a large empire, it has recently taken the decision to exit the EU.

So, what do you know about the UK?

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '17

I'd say the package did more good than harm overall.

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u/AbstractLemgth United Nation Feb 23 '17

I'd say the package did more good than harm overall.

tell that to the victims of the bengali and irish famines. this is precisely what i'm talking about when i say that the UK population is staggeringly undereducated on the empire.

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u/TheHonourableJoJo Great Britain Feb 24 '17

There is actually a reason for that. British schools try to avoid teaching about the Empire in any capacity in order to avoid officially glorifying it. It's a very British policy of ignoring it and hoping it goes away but honestly they're not wrong about the risk of accidental glorification. I've worked part-time at a few museums and it is VERY difficult to impart nuance to kids that aren't really interested. It's an issue that we have with our teaching of WWI as well, the teaching program is aimed to teach the line "WWI was a massive human tragedy" but I know so many kids who switch off at the nuanced bits and simply took away the idea that Britain beat Germany in a war.

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u/AbstractLemgth United Nation Feb 24 '17

I think that considering we learn about the holocaust in year 9 and they get how bad that was, i'm not entirely down with this idea. But then I guess it would depend on the teachers, and i'm sure there's more than a handful of teachers who aren't clued up themselves.

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u/TheHonourableJoJo Great Britain Feb 24 '17

Teaching the holocaust was bad is easy to do. Britain is on the right side of the conflict and the holocaust is so socially ingrained as terrible most kids know about it and what the correct attitude towards it is long before they cover it in school.

The problem with teaching the Empire is that if for example you cover the Punjab or Bengal famines. In order to cover those you have to first explain how Britain got there and why they were in control. That is the bit that gets latched onto by kids not really paying attention.

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u/AbstractLemgth United Nation Feb 24 '17

It's true, and I certainly agree that it can be difficult to teach nuanced concepts to adolescents, but I don't think that means that the entire subject should just be ignored with the hope that it will just go away. At the very least, an actual coverage of the Empire and how it treated it's colonies would be better than the vague 'it was pretty big' which we get at the moment.

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u/TheHonourableJoJo Great Britain Feb 24 '17

Maybe but at the same time most people in my generation barely think about the Empire it has little bearing on decision making. It's probably one of the reasons the young were so overwhelmingly anti-Brexit none of them were thinking of reestablishing the commonwealth and buying in New Zealand lamb etc.