1066 and all what?

I went to the local leisure centre for an aquacise class this evening. All the doors there are locked with numeric keypads, and the code is changed randomly whenever the duty manager feels like it. Tonight the number stamped on my ticket when I arrived was 1066, and I made some offhand comment about somebody having been studying history. "Ah yes," responded the DM, a bright young man in his twenties, who happened to be sitting behind the reception desk at the time, "I had history drummed into me so hard at school that I will never forget. 1066 - Battle of Hastings." Don't know why, probably my schoolmistressy nature, but I asked him if he knew what happened at the Battle of Hastings. No, no idea, not an inkling, zilch. So he asked the new trainee receptionist, her having been at school rather more recently - "No, sorry, I gave up history in year 8. Was there a war?" The aquacise teacher, late fifties but very fit, walks past and joins in. "Was it the Vikings?" Her second guess was Normans, but even she didn't know who against, why, nor who had won. I'd have expected her to, she's much of my generation, so she was at school when education was education... By now it was becoming a challenge. The receptionist shouted up the stairs to the Gym Manager, who was leaning over the banisters looking down on us, and who actually knew the names King Harold and William the Conqueror, so he got a tick and a gold star. And I had a very enjoyable splash about, mentally tutting to myself about the standard of education today, etc.
But then it happened that I asked myself whether, in fact, knowing that the Battle of Hastings changed almost everything at the time, even the language spoken on this island, is actually relevant to these young people's lives? After all, it was nearly a thousand years ago. To them, the Dark Ages are the days of my youth. They cannot conceive of a world without computers, mobile phones, nonstop music in the ear, instant communication - blogs even. I don't often think of myself as being old, but am amazed sometimes at the things that have changed in my lifetime. And grateful for many of them...
1066 and - so what? 2009 is where we are at.