Teens don’t know why First World War mattered
‘Harder to feel connected’
TEENAGERS do not understand the importance of the First World War because there are no longer any survivors to tell them about it, research suggests.
While previous generations had parents and grandparents who could pass on personal stories of the conflict, this is no longer the case a century on.
The 1914-1918 war saw battles rage from the Somme to Gallipoli and 17million soldiers and civilians killed, including just over 700,000 British troops.
Besides the human cost, the war reshaped the political landscape, leading to the creation of the League of Nations, forerunner to the United Nations. At the same time, German resentment eventually led to the rise of the Nazis and the Second World War.
Yet much of this is lost on today’s children, the research by the University College London Institute of Education suggests.
A poll by ComRes has found that two thirds of adults believe young people do not understand the significance of the conflict.
The result was broadly similar across all age groups, with 58 per cent of those aged 18-24 reaching this conclusion and 75 per cent of over 65s doing so.
In addition, only 44 per cent of those surveyed considered that adults themselves understand the significance of the First World War. Experts said the results showed that generation by generation, Britain is losing a vital connection with the battles fought and lives sacrificed between 1914-1918.
Britain’s last Great War veteran, Florence Green, who served in the Women’s Royal Air Force aged 17, died in 2012 at the age of 110. Simon Bendry, programme director of the UCL Institute of Education’s First World War Centenary Battlefields Tour programme, said: ‘ The last First World War veterans have all passed on, so it is so much harder for the younger generation to feel con- nected to the events or to imagine the battlefields and the experiences people went through, until they see it for themselves.
‘Adults are right to fear that, generation by generation, our country is becoming increasingly out of touch with what was undoubtedly one of the most pivotal historical events to shape our country, and the world at large.’
In 2014 the then education secretary Michael Gove said Britain’s role in the war was being misrepresented in popular fiction.
Writing in the Daily Mail, he said: ‘Our understanding of the war has been overlaid by misunderstandings, and misrepresentations which reflect an, at best, ambiguous, attitude to this country and, at worst, an unhappy compulsion on the part of some to denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage.
‘The conflict has, for many, been seen through the fictional prism of dramas such as Oh! What A Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an outof-touch elite. Even to this day there are Left-wing academics all too happy to feed those myths.’
The poll of 2,000 people by ComRes was commissioned by the London Institute of Education and school tour operator Equity.
It was carried out as part of a Government-funded programme running battlefield tours to the Western Front for secondary school pupils.