Quote:
Originally Posted by Platapus
But by gum we sure do cover the civil war.
In US schools, American history consists of
Stuff that happened a long time ago
Nothing happens
Nothing happens
Revolutionary war (which we won, single handedly, all by ourselves)
nothing happens
nothing happens
CIVIL WAR (which we won single handedly against our selves)
CIVIL WAR
CIVIL WAR
Nothing happens
Nothing happens
Industrial revolution (but which one is not clear or what happened, just that the US was the bestest)
Nothing happens
WWI (just that we won it... single handedly..all by ourselves)
Nothing happens
Nothing happens
Great depression but not really getting into how or what really happened
Nothing happens
Nothing happens
Out of the clear, suddenly with no warning WWII (which really started in 1941) which we did win single handedly all by ourselves
Nothing happens
Nothing happens
time to graduate.
That's history in public schools when I went through.  So glad I cultivated an independent interest in history as a grub. |
i dont know how long ago you went through but this is horribly inaccurate now, students now, in U.S history at least, learn about everything. They learn about the colonial period, and all of my teachers have highlighted the fact that the americans blew the problem out of proportion in the revolutionary war, and of how france was one of the biggest reasons we came out on top.
We covered the years after, then the war of 1812, the great expansion into the west, The industrial revolution and the smaller wars in the latter half of the 1800s, such as the mexican-american war and spanish american wars, to WW1, the 1920s, the depression, WW2, 50s, Vietnam and the cold war, 80s, and the gulf war. And all without the ultra-nationalist Go-america attitudes either, it was more neutral than you claim it was. That was my experience, and its pretty dam recent too.
In World History its pretty broad and neutral too, i was surprised how my world history teacher dealt with the russian revolution and the times after, she didn't just recite the anti-communist tirade, she taught about all aspects of communism. We covered 1700s imperialism, napoleon, the russian revolution, ww1 and 2, the franco-prussian war, the chinese civil war, a whole broad range of subjects. Thought to be honest, that teacher was the worst one i ever had, not in terms of her teaching skills but of her as a person. Horribly sexist and constantly infuriated with us, especially men, and i'm not even blowing that out of proportion either. She spent 10 minutes out of a period one time grilling this student who arrived late frequently, ten minutes out of the period for something so mundane and unimportant to the rest of us. A good teacher but a horrible person.