Britain's History Channel Probes Kids' Views on Ancient and Paranormal Mysteries

The History channel tends to be bad wherever it squats. The UK version of the channel is no exception, even if it is only partly owned by A+E Networks, the parent company of the US version. The UK channel’s co-owner is Sky, a subsidiary of Comcast. (Ironically enough, Comcast’s NBC was once a co-owner of A+E Networks.) Anyway, the UK History channel launched a block of paranormal and conspiracy programming imported from the US under the moniker of “Mystery Season,” and to celebrate, they conducted a poll of 1,000 children to measure how much the Ancient Aliens worldview has saturated the next generation of consumers. According to History UK, kids can’t get enough paranormal conspiracies, and “they also demonstrate an impressive understanding of mysterious phenomena such as pyramids and portals.” Good to know that History still considers pyramids to be inexplicable.

History released a video of kids talking about their questions about the universe, which were heavily colored toward the supernatural claims popular on TV:

History then explained their poll:

The video is accompanied by a poll of 1,000 children in primary school, which found that ghosts are the number one curiosity of the nation’s youngsters, with 32% wanting to know whether they exist, closely followed by 30% who want an answer on the existence of extra-terrestrial life forms, and 23% who need to know whether the Loch Ness Monster is more than a myth.
 
The research also found kids wanted to know why animals don’t speak the same language as humans, who named the dinosaurs and why can’t you see god when you’re in space.
 
Whether fish sleep, what stars are made of and who invented money are also questions children want answered, while they are also baffled about the existence of elves, unicorns, mermaids and Yetis. 
 
More than a quarter of children believe that the Loch Ness monster is real, with 17 per cent of children convinced they have seen a ghost.

This is probably normal for kids, given the dreck that appears on TV, but the horrifying part is what the History channel’s spokesperson had to say in response. They recognized that they are responsible for educating the public, and they purposely feed the public lies anyway: “Kids always look up to parents as the fonts of all knowledge with so many questions, but mums and dads can’t know everything – and will often look to documentaries or the internet for help to quench their kid’s thirst for knowledge,” the spokesperson said.
 
Maybe History should keep that in mind before passing off Ancient Aliens and Curse of Oak Island as guides to the mysteries of existence.
 
There was good news from the poll, however. The good news is that kids are apparently much less convinced by the History Channel’s lies than adults. According to the poll, only 5% of kids believe that Stonehenge is an alien landing pad or that pyramids are literal portals to another dimension. By contrast 44% knew Stonehenge was an ancient monument and 57% know the Egyptian pyramids to be tombs.
 
Now, all we have to do is stop them from watching the History channel so they don’t get misinformed.