Fiona McCade: Ignorance triggers that sinking feeling MANY years ago, when my father was a primary school teacher, one of his pupils was desperate to convince him that the Titanic had been raised. Dad tried to explain that it most certainly had not. "But sir, I saw it happen!" cried the boy. I saw it on the telly! It was real! It turns out that he'd seen the film Raise The Titanic and become confused between fantasy and reality. I can forgive a ten-year-old for making a mistake like that, but can I forgive a significant number of Twitter users, for whom last week's Titanic centenary commemorations came as something of a shock? As people tweeted their opinions on the Titanic story, it soon became evident that not everybody was quite on the ball. "Hell, I've just realised the Titanic was a real event!!!" said one. Nobody told me Titanic was real? How am I just finding this out?!" said another. How indeed. Many others were equally confused, one admitting that: "I thought the Titanic was just a movie" and wondering: "Is it bad that I didn't know the Titanic was real? Always thought it was just a film. Well, sweetheart, it might not be "bad" exactly, but since you're probably over ten years old, it's a bit sad. Obviously wrongly, I've tended to assume that because everybody is on the same planet, we're all open and receptive to the same information. Whether or not we're actively trying to be. For example, I didn't do it deliberately, but I find that I know the names of all the members of One Direction. It's not bad, but at my age, it's definitely sad. However, the point is that I simply can't help it - I'm continuously absorbing the zeitgeist by cultural osmosis. If you have just half an eye on the media, you can pick up all sorts of useless information.And most people today have the media constantly streaming through their lives. As a society, we should know more than all previous generations put together, thanks to Google and Wikipedia, and the almost countless sources of information that are now at our fingertips. So I'm baffled: how on earth did these people manage to avoid learning that the Titanic was a real ship? You can't blame this level of ignorance on a mere lack of education. The Titanic disaster isn't something that needs to be taught in schools - it was a lesson in hubris more than anything, and one which has been largely learned - but knowing about it should be a simple matter of general knowledge. What amazes me is how can anyone get to the age of having a Twitter account and not realise that it actually happened. Don't you come across this sort of stuff just by being awake? Significantly, these people know about the 1997 film Titanic, but are unfamiliar with the actual events of 1912. They've picked up on the fairy story, but somehow totally missed the facts upon which it was (loosely) based. Is it that their heads are so stuffed with entertainment news and gossip, there's no room left for real events? Are these the kind of people you sometimes hear about in surveys, who can reel off the entire cast of The Only Way Is Essex, but struggle to name the Prime Minister? Perhaps entertainment in general, and film in particular, are the only ways to reach certain demographics, but it can be a minefield of misunderstanding. For example, some people see a film and believe that, because it's a film, it must be true; meanwhile others, like the Titanic Twitterers, see a film and assume that, because it's a film, it must be fiction. So, let's provide some guidelines to help those who are apparently incapable of using Google. Alongside the age certification, and the helpful warnings like "Contains mild innuendo," we could give films an Historical Authenticity Grade. They would probably look something like this: Grade 1: As historically accurate as modern scholarship allows. Grade 2: Based on real events and actual people. Grade 3: There's a shred of truth in here. Grade 4: This is total and utter fiction. And Grade 5: Braveheart.