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I always thought that High School World History was taught over a period of 2 years, 9th and 10th grades. The ancient world starting with agricultural/tribal age, then Sparta/Greeks, Egyptian, Roman Empire, Eastern Dynasties, Ancient Indian Civilizations in the Americas, etc. in the first year. 11th Grade is American History.
Not necessarily. Here, the foundations are set with world geography in 7th grade, civics in 8th grade, American History in 9th grade, and World History in 10th grade. American Government is 11th grade. Additional history courses are available as electives. If a kid wants to study the Vietnam era in depth, it's available.
In my state, they get state history in 4th grade, US history in 5th grade, Western Hemisphere geography/history in 6th grade, Eastern Hemisphere geography/history in 7th grade, US history through Reconstruction in 8th grade, and then World History in 10th grade & US History 1877+ in 11th. Electives at our high school are quite limited but include Intro to Social Science, Current Events, Ethnic Studies, Indiana History, Psychology, and Sociology. Seniors are required to take American government & Economics, 1 semester each.
When I went through school in the late 70s & early 80s, it was essentially the same except we were expected to memorize the states & capitals, and our 7th grade class focused heavily on geography & geology rather than history & culture in the first semester. We were tracked into World History for a year (grade 9 instead of 10) or Geography/Urban Development for the less academically-inclined.
Our school corporation is heavily low-income & low-scoring on tests. Having just finished middle school, our child had two different teachers that were teaching from the previous set of standards (from 2001 instead of 2014) until I pointed it out and asked why. Their textbooks were from 2008-2010. One teacher ended up abandoning the textbook halfway through the year and pulling things together from teacherspayteachers & other online sources to meet 2014 standards.
They were never expected or made to learn the states, let alone the capitals. We taught that at home after being told that they were focusing more on critical thinking rather than making them memorize things that could be googled. I figured it would be a good idea for him to know that someone from Oregon was not from another country, for example.
I remember when our history teacher died at the beginning of the year and a substitute teacher took over for him. He sported a crewcut, which was very rare in my neighborhood back in those days. He had those Opie Taylor kind of ears, looked like a taxi with both doors open. He didn't teach history in any kind of order, we would be learning about Genghis Khan one day and the sinking of the Lusitania the next. For most of the year he would ask, " What do you want to discuss today ?"
I kind of liked it that way.
It seems like an oxymoron to speak of the future of history, but the longer humanity is around, the smaller the past must become. If you are are scholar or have a deep interest, you might wind up reading Ceasar's Commentaries, but the vast majority's awareness of the conquest of Gaul comes from reading a short summary of the events and outcomes in a book devoted to a broader history of Rome, written by a modern historian. There are so many facts and details out there about the past that a simple mastery of the general story has to suffice.
Not only is history a perpetually refilling reservoir, but much more detailed accounts from numerous sources document our more recent ages, so the detail and facts database grows geometrically. Consequently we might ask not only what will the people of the year 2500 know about us, but what will they know of Rome? They will have had another 500 years of history added to the pile....something must be overlooked or understood only in a very digested manner.
Finally, the further we move from the past, the less relevancy it has for modern times. It would be impossible to figure out the particular impact that Caesar's assassination had on anyone living, but the same could not be said for the Russian Revolution. Anyone living who went through the Cold War felt the impact of that event.
So it should not be surprising that we have arrived at a time where the plate has become too full and something must be dumped. The plate will continue to get fuller and fuller, perhaps by the year 3500, history books will cover the entire period from the stone age through the space age with "There was a period of adjustment and growth for several thousand years..."
Agreed. "What to cover" in history classes has been a point of contention since Herodotus. Although I'm sad they're cutting antiquity and the middle ages - periods that are very important to who we are today.
Personally, despite the fact that I'm very intrigued with the modern period, I think as a society we are too obsessed with 19th and 20th centuries and especially their wars. The Nazis in particular are given too much coverage.
Personally, despite the fact that I'm very intrigued with the modern period, I think as a society we are too obsessed with 19th and 20th centuries and especially their wars. The Nazis in particular are given too much coverage.
Those time periods are far more accessible to us than any earlier times. Photography arrived in the 19th Century, film in the 20th, having the actual images of the players on the historical stage, or the actual event captured on film/video, makes them much more real and credible to modern readers.
Film has also served to distort the ancient past, typically presenting life as a lot cleaner and less disgusting than it actually was. We've been taught that Roman aristocrats talked with upper crust English accents, the soldiers and ordinary plebeians with Cockney accents, and the slaves and other rebellious sorts talked like Americans. If we were transported back to the real era, it would seem wrong to us.
The term "Dark Ages" is perfectly suitable for the period starting with the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the Enlightenment.
Serfdom -- a nice way of saying slavery -- was a step backward, not forward. Feudalism was a step backward, not forward. Politically, socially, economically and culturally, everything went backward, not forward.
In Europe, maybe. But that period was much less "dark" everywhere else. This is WORLD history we are talking about.... Not Eurpean History, there is a separate AP class for that.
Those time periods are far more accessible to us than any earlier times. Photography arrived in the 19th Century, film in the 20th, having the actual images of the players on the historical stage, or the actual event captured on film/video, makes them much more real and credible to modern readers.
Film has also served to distort the ancient past, typically presenting life as a lot cleaner and less disgusting than it actually was. We've been taught that Roman aristocrats talked with upper crust English accents, the soldiers and ordinary plebeians with Cockney accents, and the slaves and other rebellious sorts talked like Americans. If we were transported back to the real era, it would seem wrong to us.
I generally agree that the modern period is more accessible.
Even so, WWII still gets greatly disproportionate coverage as compared to, oh, events of the 1970s or something, which we have plenty of film of. I've recently been in a number of high school history classes. One of my observations was that Watergate got less coverage than it did when I was in high school in the 90s. There's this weird comic-booky fascination with WWII and Hitler as a kind of super-villain & the classes spend a ton of time on what I considered minutiae of WWII. I actually think the comic book movies so popular in the 2010s have contributed to this.
I was recently involved in a survey of AP history high school students asking them about what they feel their history classes covered well and no so well. The most numerous response for what they felt got short shrift were the 1990s and 2000s.
I was recently involved in a survey of AP history high school students asking them about what they feel their history classes covered well and no so well. The most numerous response for what they felt got short shrift were the 1990s and 2000s.
I can see why they would want the '90's, it was packed with public spectacle. We had the Gulf War with the you-are-there camera work, the Rodney King beating, trial of the officers and subsequent riots. For sick sad soap opera we had Tanya Harding and Amy Fisher/ Joey Buttafuco. All of that was eclipsed by the O.J. saga and that was surpassed by the Clinton/Lewinsky melodrama. And somewhere in all that we had a heavyweight championship fight featuring the challenger biting off a piece of the champion's ear.
In my lifetime, the only era that rivals the '90's for continuous public drama was from 1968 through 1975. Everyone knows about '68...the assassinations, the riots at the Democrat's convention, '69 had Woodstock and Charley Manson, '70 was Kent State. Into the '70's we had the Billy Jean King/Bobby Riggs battle of the sexes, Evel Knievel trying to ride a rocket across the Snake River Canyon, and the main event..Watergate, which was 100% absorbing in '73 and '74. Then we wrapped up the era with the weird saga of Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army.
History teachers would do well to focus on these two periods, students will always learn more when they are also being entertained. Life is at its most interesting when things are a mess.
I can see why they would want the '90's, it was packed with public spectacle. We had the Gulf War with the you-are-there camera work, the Rodney King beating, trial of the officers and subsequent riots. For sick sad soap opera we had Tanya Harding and Amy Fisher/ Joey Buttafuco. All of that was eclipsed by the O.J. saga and that was surpassed by the Clinton/Lewinsky melodrama. And somewhere in all that we had a heavyweight championship fight featuring the challenger biting off a piece of the champion's ear.
In my lifetime, the only era that rivals the '90's for continuous public drama was from 1968 through 1975. Everyone knows about '68...the assassinations, the riots at the Democrat's convention, '69 had Woodstock and Charley Manson, '70 was Kent State. Into the '70's we had the Billy Jean King/Bobby Riggs battle of the sexes, Evel Knievel trying to ride a rocket across the Snake River Canyon, and the main event..Watergate, which was 100% absorbing in '73 and '74. Then we wrapped up the era with the weird saga of Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army.
History teachers would do well to focus on these two periods, students will always learn more when they are also being entertained. Life is at its most interesting when things are a mess.
And all the world history you mentioned is American history. I would have thought the war in Angola, the attacks on the olympics, and thousands of other events are more of world history than Evil jump over the canyon or OJ boring drive down a freeway. Rename the course American entertainment. ☺
And all the world history you mentioned is American history. I would have thought the war in Angola, the attacks on the olympics, and thousands of other events are more of world history than Evil jump over the canyon or OJ boring drive down a freeway. Rename the course American entertainment. ☺
I was thinking of the curriculum for an American history course, so, unsurprisingly, it centered on American events. A world history course would focus on world events.
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History & what is taught
