Kings and Queens

Anu Garg yesterday quoted the great Martin Gardner on his Word.A.Day page:

Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals, the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great creative scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned if at all. -Martin Gardner, mathematician and writer (21 Oct 1914-2010)

[In the US, of course, public really does mean public]

This side of the Atlantic, we were in my day at least taught about the people who forged the Industrial Revolution, the engineers and inventors, who certainly fitted Gardner's criterion of radically altering history. There was also a trend in the 1960s to teach more social history, I believe. However, recent election and referendum results lead me to believe that the teaching of the following generation must have reverted to the illusory patriotism exemplified by kings and queens.