What do Americans learn in school about history?

[janewilliams20]

I was chatting away in another community entirely, using various historical parallels to describe things, and was informed by a couple of American posters that I was overestimating the historical knowledge of the average American by a considerable degree. Their description of "what Americans learn" seems to imply that by the end of senior school,

Comments

[englishmann]

In secondary school, I had an Ancient cultures/anthropology/comparative ancient theology/geography class in 6th, an an ancient Asian cultures social studies class in 7th (I remember learning about China, Japan and Islam...), 8th was American History, 9th was "World Cultures" (kind of a misnomer; I remember doing general social studies work and a model UN thing, and learning about Islam again). 10th was AP European History, which again was a big misnomer; it was everything from the Renaissance in Italy to WWII, very cursory shit, almost nothing British. In fact, I only remember learning about Cromwell and being taught this stupid model for remembering the succession of kings/events around him. 11th was AP American History. 12th was AP US Government and Politics.

In primary school, I remember learning about the Colonies. And that's it. I'm not sure how useful it was, now that I think of it, because the only thing that sticks out to me were the illustrations of what a person from a certain era would look like with their outfits and props mapped out and explained. I rather liked those because I've always been interested in history and a bit of a history geek.

Most of my BRITISH history knowledge comes from being British, being told things by my family, growing up watching programmes on PBS over here, reading into historical context more as I became an English lit major (it helps that a lot of my professors are historicists like me), and my own private interest/reading.

[lothy]

I've noticed that quite a few people commenting here have mentioned classes to do with law, government, politics, etc, and I'm curious as to why they're counted as relevant. Do they contain a lot of history?

[cass_rising]

In my school, government and economics counted as our senior history requirement even though it contained very little history.

[lothy]

That's... bizarre.

[englishmann]

It was a "senior thing" at my school, too. Social studies was an elective that year, so you could choose psychology, sociology, gov, all kinds of things; I had women's studies, comparative religion, and then a full-year AP Government class.

[englishmann]

Some, but not very much. We had presumably learned all the presidents and their parties the year before in AP US History (I never did, haha, and still did well in the class), as well as the historical changes in the American government over time...so it wasn't necessary to go back over it. I do recall that we went over the formation of the government in 1776, the transition from federalism to a republican democracy, factionism and such, but we mostly learned about the process of a bill becoming a law, different polling methods and results, lobbying, the judiciary, economics, the veto process, the political parties. It was all naturally situated within the history, but it was different to AP US History because our essays would be, for instance, on the difference between a certain type of democracy and another, the methods of vote fixing, etc. We did a lot of vocabulary and debates - about what, now, I do not remember; I just remember I hated the fricking debates. The 2004 election was going on at the time, so our curriculum was heavily tied into that.

It's kind of shocking to me that I remember so little from two out of four of my AP classes, as they were my favourites in high school, and I did well enough on all the exams to receive college credit for them. How I did I will never know, judging by how little I've retained!

[lothy]

I never understood the whole 'memorising the presidents' idea...

It's interesting; we didn't really do any study of law, government etc, except as came up in subjects like history and sociology. Some British schools do do politics (I don't think mine did though I'm not 100% positive) but generally only as an option at A Level. I kind of wish that I had studied a little more of it, though I wouldn't have wanted to do quite as much as you described.

[englishmann]

I remember the silly ones that stuck out to me and my like-minded mates in class: Millard Fillmore, Martin van Buren (they had the funny name factor), and then a couple of the obvious ones like Lincoln and so on. The rest...no clue, unfortunately.

I wasn't particularly fussed with it, to be honest, but it was a good option and a timely class. History was more my thing at the time, until I changed halfway through and decided that I'd do English forever and ever amen. I'm content with the choice I made then, although I infuse the history into it to keep me occupied. haha.

[nikolche]

For most people you take US government and politics instead of a history course your final year of high school (apparently some do it second to final year, but it's there either way). They don't generally include a ton of history, but systems tend to lump them together.