History lessons

[vartan]

The differing ideologies of the British immigrants as compared to the Spanish speaks great lengths with regard to their approaches.

Ross Hassig does a good job of explaining why the conquest of Mexico was 'not the conquest of a Spanish juggernaut,' but much more complicated than that.

P.S. Nobody needed to kill anyone. Those who immigrated to N. Am. did not want to assimilate the natives, hence their pushing them out.

[lonewolf371]

9th grade = no history. 10th grade = formerly world history (this is what I had); now european history (a pity, IMO). 11th grade = US history (yay, more of this). 12th grade = no formal history but you can put government and even economics in the same category (if you're into the social sciences). The world history I took used an infamous book that was very much hated by all of us mini-scholars. One word: SPODEK. Teachers of the world, do not use this book when teaching AP World History in the United States; think about the children! US history and later government were similar for me. I was never fond of US history. I learned about how the country works and how it got the way it did, but I never learned about major/minor subversions or interventions by the USA overseas. I didn't learn about any genocides (same with world history), especially of natives. I didn't learn why the Spanish incorporated the natives while the United States-ians drove ours out. And economics never discussed why the US seems to be building up debt as opposed to eradicating it. Y U NO TEACH THIS??

Postscript: I study at a UC now, so if you have any knowledge or notion of what that entails, you know the contrast to the above. Basically, as one of my professors put it, if liberal professors in all the States were to be imprisoned at once, there would be no classes left at the UCs.

Actually probably the best history class I ever took was a early US History class in college. Part of that was likely because that was where the professor's scholarly work was focused.

My US History professor in high school was disappointing. He was very fond of Native Americans and rock and roll, so we spent a huge chunk of the course covering pre-Columbian America and the cultural changes of the 1960s. WW1 and WW2 and their impacts on the US were hardly touched, and I can't even remember anything around the Civil War or its lead-up.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Private School - U.S.

6th grade - One semester of prehistory, Egypt, India, China, One Semester of Greece and Rome
7th grade - From the Fall of Rome to 1492
8th grade - U.S. History from 1492 to present; combined with a lot of state history (big focus on Native Americans, U.S. Civil War, Civil Rights era)
(also in 8th grade, one year required of Latin, where they get some Roman history, but not much - more mythology than history)
9th grade - Geography for one semester; American Govt. for one semester
10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade - Lots of variation due to some students taking Advanced Placement (AP) courses and some not. AP and non-AP courses in European History, American History, Vietnam, and a couple of others. Also, third year Latin students have a big focus on Roman history for the year. Also, senior Ancient Greek students have a big focus on Greek history up to 272 BC (;-)).

[GenosseGeneral]

Germany, Lower Saxony, G8:

Grades 1-4: History is not an own subject. We dealt once with medieval ages, but very superficial (it was more about folding castles from cardboard).
Grade 5: Egypt, Greece. The only thing I can recall now (6 years later) from it, is not much. Something about poleis and democracy and we had to learn the Greek alphabet. We had an old teacher who also taught art, I guess that is why she gave our marks mostly for nice folders and learning things by heart, not for thinking. That was simply not part of it.
Grade 6: Rome. If I recall correctly, we dealt mostly with Rome. This was the time when they tried to introduce us carefully into a more "professional" level, like working with sources, and even a bit critical thinking, though the largest part of the class did not understand the point of it. (I recall one occasion when we dealt with the difference between the triggers and the reasons for the punic wars.) We learned quite a lot about Roman history, although we did not care so much for reasons for e.g. the development of the principat.
Grade 7: After skipping the dark ages, we started dealing with the Middle Ages. Nothing to complain about. Here we clearly focused more on general patterns than on single events/states/whatever, for example on what made the cities attractive at that time or serfdom. Not to much depth, though.
Grade 8: We dealt quite a lot with the person of Martin Luther, his ideas and the peasant risings in the 16th century. Also Mercantilism, Absolutism, French Revolution, but I guess some of this was also in year 9.
Grade 9: Age of Restauration (sp?), Industrialization, Imperialism, WWI. We had a good teacher who taught us to think.
Grade 10: Weimar Republic and only a bit(!!!) of National Socialism, and more about the beginning. Yes, we visited the KZ Neuengamme, read the Wannsee-Protokoll but WWII was a thing hardly dealt with (one or two lessons). Our teacher seemed to recognize the overcoverage of the topic in other subjects and the general public.
Grade 11: Division of Germany, Reunification and the GDR first half of the year, currently we are dealing with the Renaissance, this time on a much deeper level. Focus are early capitalism, humanism and art (why ever).
Grade 12: First semester will be something about the United States' economy in the late 19th century, 2nd semester will be repetition.

All in all, I am mostly content with it, though I would have wished FAR more depth such as economy, world order, etc. in all those eras, yet I understand that there is far too less time for this. But I always sad, sometimes even shocking how little some of my classmates just KNOW about most times. Only Nazis and KZs seem to last. o.O I also dislike the skipping of many aspects (Alexander was iirc never even mentioned; I never even heard of the hellenistic monarchies in the east before Rome TW Vanilla).

And that was one of the better schools, with mostly non-liberal (in the American sense) teachers and a fairly "balanced" schedule. Most of the interesting topics were covered in the foreign language lessons anyway, though again with a heavy dose of "white guilt" and whatnot.

Oh yes. It is a common joke along us, that any novel we read at school will either deal with mobbing or discrimination/ the holocaust.

Most Gymnasia just teach National Socialist History in real time. They don't even make an effort to teach the kids the foundations of our culture and civilization, which are far more important than the 20th-century perversions thereof. Let alone an overview over other cultures. This is partly because the ones studying to become teachers are often the dumbest of history students (with a few notable exceptions), who're just interested in modern history.

We seem to quite good teachers (mostly) who are actually interested in their topics, not the kind which became teacher because they did not know what else to do after they got their Abitur with main subjects German and arts/ history and geography, whatever.

[Lazy O]

Grades - 1-5 - No shit

6-8 - Two chapters on Rome and greece respectively, were not taught, had to read them, pirate books and learn myself. Alexander, Persia, Maurya, Gupta, all the rest of the gang.

9-10- Independence of the Subcontinent.

[strategos roma]

Suddenly it seems that the history I get is not bad at all...and I'll have IB history next year. Anyone studying it out here?

[antisocialmunky]

I watched TV. I remember when TLC had a 3 day, 12 hours a day marathon of nothing but Rome Documentaries from the early Republic to Gothic North Africa. :D

[Fluvius Camillus]

I watched TV. I remember when TLC had a 3 day, 12 hours a day marathon of nothing but Rome Documentaries from the early Republic to Gothic North Africa. :D

TLC?

Vandal north Africa btw.

~Fluvius