How did your school teach you about history?

As a dutch citizen, My school's history went like this:  
  
Prehistory


The big bang, The formation of the earth and continental drift are left out. My school may have teached about dinosaurs, But i'm not sure. It was mostly about early human settlements.  
  
Bronze age  
  
Basically, This thought me about Egyptians, Pharaohs and the pyramids. There was nothing about the Hittites, Sumerians or Assyrians. There was also nothing about the bronze age collapse.  
  
Persian antiquity


(this does not exist)

Hellenic antiquity


(this also does not exist)
  
Roman Antiquity


There's nothing about the founding of Rome or about specific wars. Instead, We're thought about how the Romans failed to subdue the Netherlands (and by extension, Western Germania) due to our swamps being too worthless. There's nothing about the battle of teutoburg forest or the batavian revolt  
  
At one point, We're made familiar with the name "Julius Ceasar" (With the misspelled Caesar), But it never goes in-depth about his career, And it's implied he was a roman emperor, Which he wasn't (He did start the roman civil wars, Which led to the roman empire being proclaimed. However, He died before the wars came to a conclusion). 
  
Medieval era  
  
I don't think it was ever specifically stated, But it was (wrongly) implied that the Roman empire fell sometime before the medieval era. The byzantine empire is never mentioned, And i was surprised when alternatehistoryhub mentioned that Rome lasted until 1453 in his "What if Rome never fell" series.  
  
There's also lots of stuff about vikings and the crusades, Although it once again does not go in depth with any specific war.  It also gives a brief overview of the rise of Islam, But it never goes in-depth about how Islam ended Zoroastrianism. It also teaches us about how the Arabs gave us modern numbers (0123456789) but it fails to mention that the Arabs did not invent these numbers on their own (rather, They got them via trade with India)  
  
I believe there was also something about Feudal Germany, But memory fails on this part  
  
Also there was something on the 80 years war if i recall
  
Industrial revolution


I think it teached this era appropriately, But my memory fails to go in detail here  
  
Discovery of America  
  
They teach us about how Columbus proved that the Earth was round and all that fake bullcrap.   
  
Also, I've heard some people say that Columbus never discovered america, Because Vikings had already crossed in the 10th century, Which i disagree with. It was still a discovery to Columbus and other Europeans. Besides, Vikings weren't the first humans to cross into america anyway, It had already been inhabited since ~18000 BC
  
French revolution


Again, My memory fails. What i do remember is that they never teached the "Napoleon was short" myth, And never teached about the Haitian revolution.  
  
World war 1  
  
This war is mostly glossed over. It was teached that we simply remained neutral in this war. It doesn't go in detail about the Armed Neutrality policy.  
  
Interwar


this does not exist, lol

World war 2


School teaches about how world war 2 started when Germany invaded Austria and they surrendered without resistance. Then they invaded Czechoslovakia and They too, Surrendered. It wasn't until Germany invaded Poland that they met resistance, But they nonetheless defeated Poland. Then it was time for the Netherlands to be defeated:  
  
Then it went ridiculously in depth about how the bombing of Rotterdam, The various dutch strategies, And the reasons for dutch surrender, While nigh-ignoring the invasions of Poland and France.  
  
Then nothing happens for a while (except for the unimportant invasion of Russia) and then the japanese decide to invade indonesia  
  
Then it's about how the Japanese made them bow to the ground and how the Indonesians still preferred the japanese over us.    
  
Then there's something about anne frank, The hongerwinter of 1944, Operation Market Garden, Battle of Arnhem, And the Americans defeating Germany at some unspecified moment.
  
Indonesian war of independece


Let's not be ridiculous here. There never was an Indonesian war of independence, We just decided to abandon Indonesia after ww2, There was never a 4 year campaign to massacre Indonesian civilians despite UN warnings. Right guys?  
  
Honestly, The overfocus on the netherlands in ww2 could be justified if was a "History of the netherlands", But by failing to focus on crucial colonial wars like these, I think it fails even at that.  
  
Cold war


Then it proceeds to talk about the differences between capitalism and communism, And the berlin wall. It does not go in-depth about the rise of communism in the russian civil war, or the eastern front. The soviet union just magically gains control of eastern europe.  
  
Information age


The school felt the need to include this despite not going in-depth at all. Nothing about 9/11, The 2003 invasion of iraq, The Russo-Georgian war, Or the Iraqi insurgency.  
  
So how did your school teach you about history? Honestly it doesn't matter i just wanted to rant

Wow you did a lot of world history compared to me. Here's what I learned in my history classes

Prehistory

Short talk about how the first humans arrived into North and South American through the Beringia connecting Asia to North America. None of the other continents are important, though.

Bronze Age

A bit about Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, but nothing else. I forgot specifics except the pyramids and Hieroglyphs and Cuneiform symbols.

Persian Antiquity


Hellenic Antiquity

I learned a bit about how Democracy developed in Athens and some famous philosophers like Socrates and Plato and how Alexander the Great conquered a lot of Asia and spread Greek culture around.

Roman Antiquity

My classes just briefly mentioned that it was a really big and long lasting empire and that it collapsed in 476 AD (No one cares about the Byzantines I guess)

Medieval Era

Feudalism...that's it. And the renaissance was a thing and the fall of Constantinople was a big deal.

Age of Discovery

From this point forward, I only learned about things concerning what is now Canada and specifically Quebec.

So we learned a bit about the Native Americans right before Columbus and some of the famous explorers including Jacques Cartier who explored the St. Lawrence River. We also learned about Samuel de Champlain and the founding of Quebec City in 1608 and the founding of Montreal in 1642 (short tangent but people in Montreal are celebrating its 375 this year and a ton of festivals and events are happening which is a bit weird since 375 is a bit of a weird number like 400 is understandable but 375?)


New France

Originally the French colonies were administered by Chartered Companies until 1663 when Louis XIV took direct control of it and it lasted until 1763 at the end of the Seven Years war and most of New France (except St. Pierre and Miquelon which is still owned by France) was given to Britain.

History under Britain

The Royal Proclamation initially created the Quebec which was extremely small and meant to assimilate the French. Then the Quebec Act was passed in 1774 which greatly expanded the territory and accommodate the Francophone population so they didn't revolt. It went from Labrador all the way to Ohio and pissed off a ton of Americans in the 13 colonies. After the constitutional act was made in 1791 to seperate Quebec in Upper and Lower Canada to avoid conflict between English loyalists (fled the USA) and the French. Then the 1837 rebellions happened and the Act of Union was passed in 1840 to assimilate the French but it backfired and both sides wanted responsible government.

Confederation

The Dominion of Canada was formed in 1867 when the Province of Canada convinced New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to join them to gain more autonomy from Britain.

This is already way too long, so I'm gonna keep it short now

French Revolution

Lol what's that? Who's Napoleon? All we care about was the war of 1812 #burnthewhitehouse #neverforget

Seriously though, that's about it for that era

Industrial Revolution

A bit of detail how Canada industrialized in the 19th century, but not that much about the rest of the world

World War 1

Conscription Crisis almost causes a civil war in Canada between English and French. That's it

Interwar

Not important

World War 2

Conscription Crisis almost causes a civil war in Canada between English and French (again). That's it

Cold War

That time when the world was almost constantly on the verge of destruction from Nukes between USA and the USSR? Never heard of it

Modern Era

Grande Noirceur (really conservative Quebec), Revolution Tranquille (really liberal Quebec and rise of seperatism), Expo 67, the October Crisis, the first and second Referendum, and that's about it.

Sorry for the repost my computer messed up ignore this one

I grew up in Florida and went to a charter school until sixth grade, so my experiences might be different from other Americans, but here goes...

I really only learned about things prior to the Renaissance in elementary school. We got the same stuff about native peoples crossing into America over the land bridge. I got some stuff about Ancient Egypt and the old Mideastern civilizations, but I hardly remember anything specific. We also got a very brief overview of Greece and Rome. I specifically recall spending several months learning about the Seminole. Then we jumped ahead to Columbus (learning nothing about the context of his voyage), and then straight into the Revolution and standard US history.

I moved to Kansas after sixth grade and jumped right into a Kansas History course, which covered the settlers, natives, and Bleeding Kansas and just about nothing else. Then I had a later US history course which went from the Industrial Revolution (for way too damn long) into WWII (also for way too damn long). Sure, there's a lot of meat in WWII, but when your entire education of the first world war is a few clips of "All's Quiet on the Western Front," you know something has gone wrong with time management.

In high school, I took a World History class which talked about the Renaissance and then skipped into the World Wars again. FINALLY, after that, I managed to schedule myself into some advanced classes, and I ended up taking some pretty decent US history classes with a teacher who knew what he was talking about and could actually make the material enjoyable. My European History course was also pretty good, beginning with the Hundred Years' War and hitting most of the major points up to the collapse of Yugoslavia.

And that was my pre-college history experience. I kinda suspect that my pre-high school classes are indicative of why so many Americans have zero idea about anything that happened in the rest of the world not directly involving us, but your mileage may vary.

Mr Trolldemort wrote: All we care about was the war of 1812 #burnthewhitehouse #neverforget

Canada lookin' for a rematch?

DuceMoosolini wrote:I grew up in Florida and went to a charter school until sixth grade, so my experiences might be different from other Americans, but here goes...

I really only learned about things prior to the Renaissance in elementary school. We got the same stuff about native peoples crossing into America over the land bridge. I got some stuff about Ancient Egypt and the old Mideastern civilizations, but I hardly remember anything specific. We also got a very brief overview of Greece and Rome. I specifically recall spending several months learning about the Seminole. Then we jumped ahead to Columbus (learning nothing about the context of his voyage), and then straight into the Revolution and standard US history.

I moved to Kansas after sixth grade and jumped right into a Kansas History course, which covered the settlers, natives, and Bleeding Kansas and just about nothing else. Then I had a later US history course which went from the Industrial Revolution (for way too damn long) into WWII (also for way too damn long). Sure, there's a lot of meat in WWII, but when your entire education of the first world war is a few clips of "All's Quiet on the Western Front," you know something has gone wrong with time management.

In high school, I took a World History class which talked about the Renaissance and then skipped into the World Wars again. FINALLY, after that, I managed to schedule myself into some advanced classes, and I ended up taking some pretty decent US history classes with a teacher who knew what he was talking about and could actually make the material enjoyable. My European History course was also pretty good, beginning with the Hundred Years' War and hitting most of the major points up to the collapse of Yugoslavia.

And that was my pre-college history experience. I kinda suspect that my pre-high school classes are indicative of why so many Americans have zero idea about anything that happened in the rest of the world not directly involving us, but your mileage may vary.

Yeah see going to a Florida public school, all history was extremely Western and we hardly talked about the Middle East, any civilizations in the America pre-Columbian, any African civilizations (briefly) 50% was glorifying the Roman Empire, and who America "never lost a war" *cough* Vietnam.

Especially American History, but more recently they have started to change the curriculum to not piss off anymore Natives or glorify President Andrew Jackson.

mayexplains wrote:

DuceMoosolini wrote:(Trimmed)

Yeah see going to a Florida public school, all history was extremely Western and we hardly talked about the Middle East, any civilizations in the America pre-Columbian, any African civilizations (briefly) 50% was glorifying the Roman Empire, and who America "never lost a war" *cough* Vietnam.

What do you mean with "Glorifying the Roman Empire"? 5 million square km and an army of 450 000 is no pushover.

Oh no of course not but there was so much more in history, and I understand that all Western civilizations are based of the Roman empire but just the fact that majority of what I learned in history class only dealt with how great it was and never the faults within the Empire or how it weakened, just that it poof got invaded and vanished. (or became Byzantium).

I live in California, just across the hills from Berkeley, so this is what I learned:

In 4th grade we learned exclusively about the history of California, from the early Spanish missions to the Gold Rush and its admission to the Union.

In 5th grade we learned exclusively about the American Revolution and the War for Independence. We covered the full revolutionary period from the 1763 Treaty of Paris to the 1783 Treaty of Paris.

In 6th grade we learned about Ancient History, from the dawn of civilization in Mesopotamia to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. However, the majority of what we learned was grossly oversimplified to the extent of blatant inaccuracy. I was particularly disappointed with the textbook's treatment of biblical history; it claimed, for instance, that Abraham, his son Isaac, and grandson Jacob all migrated together to Egypt to escape a famine, following which they were immediately bound to slavery.

In seventh grade we studied medieval history, from the fall of Rome in AD 476 to the discovery of America.

In eighth grade we covered the history of the United States, from the drafting of the Constitution in 1787 to the rise of American imperialism at the end of the 19th century. (Of course, we spent an obligatory 20 minutes at the beginning of the course learning about the migration of paleolithic Humans through Beringia and into America, in order to appear less Eurocentric in our discussion of American history. The vast majority of the curriculum, however, centered on slavery and the Civil War.

In 9th grade, we took a mandatory introductory course on general world history, from the French Revolution of 1789 to the fall of Communism at the end of the 20th century. It was relatively interesting and informative, but on the rare occasion that we discussed events occurring on continents other than Europe, it was almost always in the context of European colonialism and imperialism.

Wow that's a pretty good curriculum, covering several different historical time periods and places in detail each year instead of doing a broad view of the same thing every year

Serbian students learn about Persians, Hettites, Sumerians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Serbian medieval history, Byzantium, Franks, crusades, 100 years war, Ottomans, Habsburgs, Romanovs, renaissance, absolute monarchies, French and American revolution, Napoleon, modern Serbian history (1804 - 1918), Yugoslavia, WWI, WWII and interwar period. The last lessons are about Cold War and the end of Yugoslavia but teacher do not have time for them.

Prehistory: Dinosaurs exist. That's about it.

Ancient history: "What's a Rome? Who's Thermopylae? Maurya? never heard of 'em. Babylon, more like Nah-bylon"
They basically skipped it all.

Medieval: Again, totally ignored.

Early modern: Aztec conquest, American Revolution, French Rveolution, Napoleon (sort of, they skipped over a ton), Franco-Prussian war.

Modern: Franz Ferdinand, Rise of Hitler, Holocaust, Holodomor, Rape of Nanjing, Unit 731, Berlin Airlift, Korean War, Berlin Wall, Nuclear Arms Race, Fall of USSR, Rwandan Genocide, Apartheid.

Whoever designed this curriculum, they certainly seem to like crimes against humanity.

That's basically it. I gotta say, I would love to be a history teacher, but this heavily limited curriculum makes me not wanna do it. If I can't ramble on for a few hours about Byzantine Iconoclasm or the Congo Crisis, what's the point?

Crazy Boris wrote:Prehistory: Dinosaurs exist. That's about it.

Ancient history: "What's a Rome? Who's Thermopylae? Maurya? never heard of 'em. Babylon, more like Nah-bylon"
They basically skipped it all.

Medieval: Again, totally ignored.

Early modern: Aztec conquest, American Revolution, French Rveolution, Napoleon (sort of, they skipped over a ton), Franco-Prussian war.

Modern: Franz Ferdinand, Rise of Hitler, Holocaust, Holodomor, Rape of Nanjing, Unit 731, Berlin Airlift, Korean War, Berlin Wall, Nuclear Arms Race, Fall of USSR, Rwandan Genocide, Apartheid.

Whoever designed this curriculum, they certainly seem to like crimes against humanity.

That's basically it. I gotta say, I would love to be a history teacher, but this heavily limited curriculum makes me not wanna do it. If I can't ramble on for a few hours about Byzantine Iconoclasm or the Congo Crisis, what's the point?

I feel the same way about history education in the US. Being a history teacher would be awesome but teachers are paid jack, and our curriculum sucks. I didn't even learn anything past Vietnam until the last two years of high school.

Afghanistan? Iraq 2003? Great African War/Rwanda? Anything that ever happened in South America? Had to learn those on my own.

Crazy Boris wrote:Prehistory: Dinosaurs exist. That's about it.

Ancient history: "What's a Rome? Who's Thermopylae? Maurya? never heard of 'em. Babylon, more like Nah-bylon"
They basically skipped it all.

Medieval: Again, totally ignored.

Early modern: Aztec conquest, American Revolution, French Rveolution, Napoleon (sort of, they skipped over a ton), Franco-Prussian war.

Modern: Franz Ferdinand, Rise of Hitler, Holocaust, Holodomor, Rape of Nanjing, Unit 731, Berlin Airlift, Korean War, Berlin Wall, Nuclear Arms Race, Fall of USSR, Rwandan Genocide, Apartheid.

Whoever designed this curriculum, they certainly seem to like crimes against humanity.

That's basically it. I gotta say, I would love to be a history teacher, but this heavily limited curriculum makes me not wanna do it. If I can't ramble on for a few hours about Byzantine Iconoclasm or the Congo Crisis, what's the point?

Wow that's a surprisingly low amount of Canadian history you learned, but very interesting stuff

Mr Trolldemort wrote:

Crazy Boris wrote:Prehistory: Dinosaurs exist. That's about it.

Ancient history: "What's a Rome? Who's Thermopylae? Maurya? never heard of 'em. Babylon, more like Nah-bylon"
They basically skipped it all.

Medieval: Again, totally ignored.

Early modern: Aztec conquest, American Revolution, French Rveolution, Napoleon (sort of, they skipped over a ton), Franco-Prussian war.

Modern: Franz Ferdinand, Rise of Hitler, Holocaust, Holodomor, Rape of Nanjing, Unit 731, Berlin Airlift, Korean War, Berlin Wall, Nuclear Arms Race, Fall of USSR, Rwandan Genocide, Apartheid.

Whoever designed this curriculum, they certainly seem to like crimes against humanity.

That's basically it. I gotta say, I would love to be a history teacher, but this heavily limited curriculum makes me not wanna do it. If I can't ramble on for a few hours about Byzantine Iconoclasm or the Congo Crisis, what's the point?

Wow that's a surprisingly low amount of Canadian history you learned, but very interesting stuff

Oh, crap, I totally forgot about Canadian stuff, we did cover a little, but a lot of it was left out. No 1837 rebellions, no transcontinental railroad, no mention of any Prime Ministers, not even Macdonald.

DuceMoosolini wrote:

Crazy Boris wrote:Prehistory: Dinosaurs exist. That's about it.

Ancient history: "What's a Rome? Who's Thermopylae? Maurya? never heard of 'em. Babylon, more like Nah-bylon"
They basically skipped it all.

Medieval: Again, totally ignored.

Early modern: Aztec conquest, American Revolution, French Rveolution, Napoleon (sort of, they skipped over a ton), Franco-Prussian war.

Modern: Franz Ferdinand, Rise of Hitler, Holocaust, Holodomor, Rape of Nanjing, Unit 731, Berlin Airlift, Korean War, Berlin Wall, Nuclear Arms Race, Fall of USSR, Rwandan Genocide, Apartheid.

Whoever designed this curriculum, they certainly seem to like crimes against humanity.

That's basically it. I gotta say, I would love to be a history teacher, but this heavily limited curriculum makes me not wanna do it. If I can't ramble on for a few hours about Byzantine Iconoclasm or the Congo Crisis, what's the point?

I feel the same way about history education in the US. Being a history teacher would be awesome but teachers are paid jack, and our curriculum sucks. I didn't even learn anything past Vietnam until the last two years of high school.

Afghanistan? Iraq 2003? Great African War/Rwanda? Anything that ever happened in South America? Had to learn those on my own.

I've actually thought about writing the EPSB (Edmonton Public school board) a couple times about this, but I know they aren't going to listen.