studying for uk residency

this paragraph is all it says about the american war of independence

snubbing americans is funny so i'll allow it

@whitequark do they let Scots read this

@bob i hope not there'd be riots

@whitequark I'd fear for the US education system but it's already dead. They just haven't noticed yet.

@masukomi to be clear, this is from a "life in the uk" booklet. it is not education, it is just gatekeeping for immigrants

@whitequark It's about as inaccurate as the descriptions we have over here...

@xgranade oh

hm.

lmfao

@whitequark so orderly, the most orderly

@SnoopJ it does mention those

this... document... is gravely insulting to at least tens of millions of people

does anyone say 'the Blitz spirit'

became how

became independent how, motherfucker

@whitequark Yes, it's a very common phrase and it's got a lot of association with inner city working class communities

@jsbarretto huh, never heard it in my life. live and learn

@whitequark Welcome to the British Establishment's view of history. It's gross.

@whitequark If you want an example of how skewed the British institutional view of history is: I didn't learn of the _existence_ of the Holy Roman Empire until I was.. 19? and that was from reading history myself. UK schools teach tedious crap about the royal family, WW1, WW2 and then you're done. Maybe it's different now (unlikely).

@Foritus yeah not hugely surprised, my hs history class was incredibly tedious and not useful at all, i had to fix that myself later

@whitequark i wonder if anything embarrassing happened in the falklands

@whitequark Turing machine? They don’t mention what happened to the guy it’s named after, do they?

@airtower ofc no

@whitequark i was aware immigration involves a lot of bullshit gatekeeping everywhere, but i wasnt expecting it to also involve this kind of brainwashing

@kouhai i thought it was embarrassing for argentina?

"most" paramilitary groups in NI are inactive

hm.

@whitequark that's a "just in case" if ever I heard one

@whitequark What do I know about the life of Roald Dahl? More than I'd like to, thank you very much.

@xgranade do tell, this will be on the test i think

@whitequark it's funny how even when writing about enemies, it's still in such a milquetoast terms.

Hitler just wanted to spread the German power and felt that terms of post-WW1 peace were unfair, nothing more. Just a guy who wanted to spread the power and address unfairness.

@IngaLovinde Holocaust is not mentioned whatsoever, so far as I can see

@whitequark a Britain-involving independence has happened

@IngaLovinde exactly

@Foritus @whitequark oh god, in the us we were actually taught about the holy roman empire in school, and we aren't even on the same continent.

there were a lot of things skipped unless you tool more advanced classes, like they never mentioned us colonization of the philippines.

i did learn about hereditary peerage in the house of lords in class though.

@artemist @Foritus they're getting rid of that iirc

@whitequark "against the proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" 🤡

@IngaLovinde every single page is a gift

i am so going to fail this test by knowing some actual history instead of propaganda at some point...

@whitequark

"Terrorism" and "WMDs", yeah, sure.

@whitequark it's easy the answer is always "drink from the puddle, remember when the binmen were hard"

@whitequark (n.b. I know it is not easy, I hyperbolize in attempt of humor)

@SnoopJ i took some online tests with zero prep and had about 50/50 chance, i've considered just booking it three times since there's only a 7 day cooloff period for a failure

@whitequark that's because it was a good thing! If only Hitler had simply stopped at the Holocaust and not tried to spread Schuko instead of these overcomplicated British wall sockets. Thankfully the Britain prevailed and can still continue to use them

@IngaLovinde gonna frame this post

"A referendum was called"

BY WHOM. WHO CALLED IT

THIS IS IN MY ACTUAL MEMORY. I WATCHED IT LIVE

@whitequark getting a good grade in bri'ish, a thing that is both possible to achieve and normal to want

@whitequark this book is quite nationalist and biased, compared to the equivalent german test (which is a few-hundred question multiple-choice test of rather basic facts about the federal republic as of today, with a bit of history)

@uint8_t it's genuinely pissing me off to read it

@whitequark it's pay to win, you're allowed to have as many attempts as you need to pass.

@nina_kali_nina yep and i fully intend to use that

i can't read this any more i have to go do something less aggravating

@whitequark I have similar feelings about Evangelion co-opting elements of Christianity because the creators found it strange and exotic

@ckape have you watched Hellsing?

@whitequark No

@ckape it inexplicably has a better appreciation for the differences between Catholics and Protestants than most of the western media i happened to watch until that point

@whitequark yeah GL with that my Hungarian gf did it last year. It's definitely weird. She acquired a "copy" that was referring to the King as: "her majesty King Charles" which shows the level of care that went into the contents

@whitequark I got second-degree cringe from simply reading your posts

@uint8_t i'm not even posting all of the soul-crushing stuff. i'd have to scan the entire book if i wanted that i think

@whitequark lol the British “invented” insulin. I feel dumber just reading these 😭 Maybe you shouldn’t study, just pick the answer you think Boris Johnson would pick and you should be all right

@whitequark I'd actually like to ask about an earlier question, "What was the role of the Royal Navy after slavery was banned?"

Except my question to the UK is more along the lines of "What was the role of the Royal Navy *before* slavery was banned then?"

@whitequark yeah but thatcher’s government had to have done *something* wrong

@kouhai as far as i know it basically saved her premiership (is that a word) and propelled her to popularity, against all odds at the time

@whitequark Believe it or not, that’s a better text than the original 2004 version.

Students of anything resembling history might be aware that nearly all the UK canals were constructed decades before the Famine; and that Irish navvies weren’t migrants because Ireland was part of the UK at that point.

The Life In The UK book is jingoistic propaganda and not worth its weight as toilet paper.

@gmh

oh I sadly can believe you on this

The Life In The UK book is jingoistic propaganda and not worth its weight as toilet paper.

this is nearly word for word what I said about it

@whitequark I’m gonna have to take a similar culture exam for NL and at least the list of countries they’ve completely fucked over within living memory in ways deeply embarrassing to acknowledge is a lot shorter. (but nonzero)

@whitequark Do you want my cram materials? The study guide made my brain threaten to liquify.

@whitequark i HOPE there is nothing about the harry potter world in this book...

@f4grx @whitequark I was about to claim there was not, but then I remembered I gave up trying to read the official study guide after about 25 minutes and just crammed the actual test questions and answers.

@ryanc @f4grx oh, are there actual q&a lists?

@ryanc yes and yes!

@whitequark

History, as taught in British schools, is interesting mostly for the fact that absolutely nothing happened between beating the French in 1815 and the start of the First World War. The Empire was a happy prosperous place with no down sides for anyone involved and Germany was just jealous of how awesome it was.

There are some especially weird things. For example, we learn about the Charge of the Light Brigade poem in English classes, but never learn anything at all about the war in which it happens in history classes.

A phenomenal amount of time is spent on the Tudors and Stewarts and almost none on the surrounding context.

@david_chisnall @whitequark What war was that charge from, in fact ?

(As a French, I have reasons not to know every single involvement of the Britts, especially when those aren't, for once fighting against us (or sometimes with us))

@Sobex @whitequark

The Crimean War. The French were also involved, but on the same side as the British for a change.

The biggest long-term impact of the war on Britain was that more people died from infection than directly from combat injuries and it led to a big push to introduce antiseptics in hospitals. Florence Nightingale pushed for this (most British people have heard of her, even if they aren’t sure why), who should be most famous for spending 40 years in bed, a level of achievement I aspire to.

@david_chisnall @whitequark , along the same lines, when I was a wee sprog in Hong Kong RCC in the 1960s, attending the UK government school atop Victoria Peak, we heard all about the least details of the 19th C. back home, and even went through a group reading of Kingsley's The Water Babies as some sort of collective punishment, but heard absolutely not a word about the two Opium Wars that resulted in... Hong Kong RCC.

Gosh, wonder why? It's a mystery.

@xgranade @whitequark My US History textbook was "kind" enough to mention that Jefferson was a slaveowning rapist. Of course, it didn't use that term and really wanted ppl not to pay attention to that "fun fact".

@whitequark @SnoopJ wait does this booklet say anything positive about any of the labour governments? It's starting to sound like a Tory fluff piece.

... which would make complete sense actually.

@http_error_418 @SnoopJ not really no

@uint8_t @whitequark the us naturalization test accepts "states' rights" as a reason for the civil war but it's not this off-putting in general

@whitequark @Foritus finally. i'd heard that they were doing that, but i won't believe it until it actually passes

@whitequark "The structure of DNA"

@whitequark good luck! The actual test used to be a fair bit easier than the textbook, with many answers having obvious (but still incorrect) answers. Like, IIRC there was "what kind of bird humans traditionally eat on Christmas in the UK?" with "Turkey" as the expected answer ;/

@nina_kali_nina @whitequark "Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat".

@whitequark It's giving me flashbacks to a course on my masters, where the exam was pick two of three essay questions, all of which basically read: "agree with the prejudices of the lecturer on the following subject".

Kind of hard, given that I disagreed so much with everything he uttered in that course, if he'd walked in and said "nice day outside", I'd have looked out the window to check...

@whitequark "Shipbuilding and coal mining declined"

Exactly *how* did that decline happen?

@whitequark @f4grx They're not exactly the real questions, but they're close enough to cram on, I'll dig them up. I scraped several sites and cleaned up the data.

@ryanc @f4grx @whitequark when I took the test, I bought the Official Practice Questions & Answers Book as a PDF, extracted the questions and answers from it, and created an Anki deck

apparently the PDF is no longer sold, you can only get paper or “app” ☹

@whitequark Insulin was developed in Canada.