Letter: Country's history, positive and negative, must not be forgotten
I recently had a letter printed which included the passage: "From our Empire days when this tiny island ruled one third of the world for four centuries, 50 nations and one quarter of the world's population came under its jurisdiction."
My 12-year-old grandson read it and declared 'good, but obviously fiction because he had never heard, or been taught it in school'.
I asked his 15-year-old sister and she confirmed his statement. I asked if they knew that GB colonised Australia with British men, women and children from our prisons – they fell about laughing!
Nial Ferguson, the most brilliant British historian of his generation, says The Times wrote Empire – How Britain made The Modern World.
The author tells us that the British Empire was the biggest ever, bar none, and asks how an archipelago of rainy islands off the north-west coast of Europe came to rule the world?
He also asks – was it a good or bad thing?
Whatever the conclusions, our children should be taught their country's history, the positive and the negative.
An education system that ignores it is grossly incompetent or under instruction from Brussels.
Bob Wydell
Oswestry
