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).
Quote Originally Posted by athanaric View Post
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.
Quote Originally Posted by athanaric View Post
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.