I have always wondered...

[Red October1984]

Originally Posted by Cybermat47

Americans are disinterested in their pre-1900 history.

I'm sick of hearing about the British invading Australia: pre-1900.

We have a lot in common

Except perhaps a love of Gettysburg and Gods & Generals

It's world history pre-1900 in general that bores me. I do like American History before 1900 but has to be after 1700...That 1608 Jamestown Colony crap gets old quick.

American History and Military History Post-1900 keep my attention. I don't want to hear about the Lost Roanoke Colony again. I don't want to hear about the exploration of El Salvador....again!

I want to hear about the major wars of the 20th Century. American schools don't teach enough of that IMO. For those of you who don't know, I am in High School. I'm between Cybermat and Dowly on the age scale. My American History book right now pretty much says that the Germans got ticked and invaded Poland. We, then, kicked some butt in Northern France...Then it goes on for 3 or 4 sections about the Japanese American Internment, the Holocaust, Women working in factories....you know....all the stuff that nobody wants to learn about. My current history teacher is a joke. I could teach the class better than her. She won't allow any movies to be shown and she won't go into detail about any of the battles. She doesn't like learning about the equipment of the different countries and the deciding factors in the war. (I'm gonna march right in there tomorrow morning and tell her about Hearts of Iron. If that fails...then maybe my Business teacher. ) Even the WW1 Chapter covered more of the battles of the war than the WW2 Chapter does. It's rather disappointing really. The Cold War chapter looks just as bad. If the book took less time focusing on Women's Rights, Japanese American Internment, Mexican-American Riots, the Holocaust (Should be a seperate chapter), and the poor German citizens of the time...we could actually learn about the actual war.

The Vietnam War is one of the shortest chapters in the book...(Gee, I wonder why) and the Korean War is almost non-existant. I think there's a few pages on the Korean War and that's it. I really wish that they seperated the World War 2 chapter from the Human Rights stuff. They need to organize the book to have a Unit on World War 1 with a few chapters and a Unit for World War 2 with a few chapters. I've learned more on the internet than in History class. I love history. I can't get enough of World War 2 history. I think the public school system is failing in that department. They want us to grow up to hate war and hate our leaders because "We rounded up all the Japanese Americans and penned them up in cruel camps for 2 years." The book contains nothing about the horrible things the Japanese did to POW's and the Chinese. Just on the Internment and Holocaust. You're gonna love this next part....

The book contains nothing at all of the major Air battles or Naval battles. The Battle of Britain is mentioned in a paragraph or two and the Battle of the Atlantic apparently wasn't important enough to even be included. There's a picture and a caption telling about German U-boats....

I offered to bring in The Enemy Below and some other movies to get a general idea of what happened but no...because we watched The Grapes of Wrath, we don't get to watch World War 2 movies.


My former teacher was much better but he retired. I would almost give my left arm to have that guy back teaching at school.


There's my rant about the teaching of the 20th Century Wars in American Schools....