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]

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.