I had a similar story growing up Charlie.

I hate bigotry, but I feel for those generations that had to sit through English history lessons which deliberately excluded anything Scottish, and along with compulsory R.E. lessons deliberately excluded anything before christianity as being savage times we need not bother with. I myself experienced this in school in the eighties. In breeding ignorance you breed contempt, the contempt tends to be directed at the percieved source of the problem. I find the chip comment quite harsh really, even if it's true, in light of the pain that kind of ignorance causes. I see it regularly. A friend of mine who is older said he got in trouble for speaking Gaelic as a child in Orkney, and for showing an interest in folklore and history. IT was beaten out of him by his minister. Now he has to admit to that ignorance when, for instance, I asked him to tell me about Orkney Selkies. He had to ask me if I was making it up, because the church stamped out folklore after the last war up there. Then he felt ashamed he didn't know his own history, I could tell, and made a comment about me being well versed on SCottish folklore - for an English. Lashing out. Yeah it's a chip, but it makes me sad, not contemptuous. Those that have never known the pain of their own ignorance wouldn't understand.

Then again - you have the just plain stupid.