Zkribbler
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Clint Eastwood's "Fistful of Dollars" is based on Kurasawa's "Yojimbo."
TIL: Today I Learned
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''World history'' here was almost entirely European and North American history
I had lots of history in HS: Ancient, Modern European, American, Asian. Two semesters of each.
Lexicus
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this is an example of how bad history education is/was in much of the US...
We have enough trouble in the UK trying to fit in "all" of British history in just three years. In England at least, it mostly ends up being just the Romans, the Normans, the Tudors and the Victorians.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
With 403,180 minutes to spare, duh.
Ideally, you don't even try.
AP World's curriculum as designed by the College Board always privileged events after 1500, even though it made reference to many earlier things. Schools were supposed to teach premodern history one year, and modern world history in the AP year, although this wasn't made explicit or required. A lot of school districts did try to compress the entirety of history into a single year, so they could cut humanities requirements and increase students' number of electives. Whatever the side benefits of increasing electives, the practice meant that history teachers found themselves compelled to do exactly what you're complaining about: teach all of AP World in a year. Even in districts that split the thing into two years of instruction found themselves compelled to spend the entire first quarter of the AP year on "review" of the previous year's material because they couldn't count on the students reliably knowing everything they needed to know before the Renaissance. It was possible to do those things well enough for motivated students to get 4s and 5s on the exam, but not reliably, and not in a way that will usefully teach people history. It was difficult for the students, but it wasn't very rigorous.
When the College Board got fed up with that nonsense this past year and announced that it was formally changing the curriculum to make it more explicitly about modern world history, there was a hue and cry from the various school districts that would be "losing" all of the premodern history. Well, no, you're "losing" it because your school district decided to turn the course into crap; you'd still have time to address premodern history if you structured your courses the way everybody else does. Some people even turned it into a racism thing, because they claimed that the premodern history taught in AP World was more heavily weighted toward non-white societies, which was, to put it bluntly, hogwash. It sucks to lose activities you like to do with your classroom, but you wouldn't be losing them if you tried to teach world history in two years.
Of course, this was partly a College Board money grab, because in order to facilitate this change-over, they conveniently designed a Pre-AP World History curriculum and provided material for those who need it...but let that go.
Frankly, even two years isn't enough for the rigor that high school world history education ought to have. (I am, however, aware that my ideal standards for the rigor of a high school history education are way, way higher than anybody else's.) But that's what we get. There are only so many slices of students' time to go around. So instead, in practice, I inject a ton of history into English lessons and assignments, chat with interested students, and recommend books.
Short of forcibly downloading information into somebody's brain, you can't make them learn something if they don't want to learn it.
GoodSarmatian
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We're talking history classes ?
I only took the bare minimum from grade 11-13. Not because I didn't care about history, but because of scheduling conflicts and I didn't want to ditch biology, chemistry, physics or sociology.
Bare minimum in the German school system is basically Failed Revolution, Bismarck, Weimar and HITLER !
I only took the bare minimum from grade 11-13. Not because I didn't care about history, but because of scheduling conflicts and I didn't want to ditch biology, chemistry, physics or sociology.
Bare minimum in the German school system is basically Failed Revolution, Bismarck, Weimar and HITLER !
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GoodSarmatian
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Depends.
I don't know how many hours your schools spend on each topic.
We first focused on the founding of Germany, rushed through the prelude of WW1 (Agadir crisis, alliance entanglements, Ottoman decline), pretty much skipped the actual war (only important things: Turks weren't what they used to be, Austrians got reckless, it was a bloody mess and Germany lost), got some basics on the Weimar Republic, focused on the end of Weimar and the Nazi rise to power, only covered the prelude and the very basics of WW2 (Stalingrad was important, Germany lost, Pacific was something that happened to other people) and discussed the Holocaust.
Yeah, German history was probably a lot more detailed than in other countries, but we didn't learn much else. The entirety of colonialism was only covered as one of the causes of WW1. India and the Opium Wars were barely mentioned, the American Civil War was something that also happened (by the way, the Americans had a civil war for some reason, but let's get back to Bismarck and Wilhelm).
Russians in Berlin, Hitler dead, they built a wall.
The End.
And, of course no mention of the Spanish American War, Mexican American War, the Brazilian Empire , Simon Bolivar, Taiping Rebellion or anything in Africa. Doesn't concern us, doesn't matter.
Frankly, every nation should prolong secondary education by at least one year just to cover post 1800 hitory.
Or two years for post 1700 history and at least a summary of what was happening in Africa and Asia.
Selective Service cards expire? wat
From listening to the younger adult generations, that seems to have been the case for at least the last 20 years.
It should be noted that each province has its own curriculum, and in Alberta the county school system had a different priority than the public school system in the cities. The first time I ever learned anything about ancient civilizations was in college (I presume you're talking about Greece/Rome/Egypt, etc.). I took the classical history course because one of my typing clients brought me a paper about the Roman baths, and I decided to take the course for myself. It was one of the most fun courses I've ever taken.
The first time I ever took a class specifically called "history" rather than "social studies" was in Grade 12. Social Studies was always a combination of history and current events, so most of what we learned was a mix of Canadian history, current events in Canada, the Middle East, Africa (there was a guest speaker in one of my junior high classes who had lived under apartheid in South Africa and had come to Canada and became a citizen), and whatever else was going on at the time.
I've gone through learning about Louis Riel numerous times - twice in elementary, once in junior high, two years in high school (grade 10 and the Grade 12 history class), and twice in college.
As mentioned, Alberta didn't have classes that were only history, or at least not the main courses. The history class I took in Grade 12 was an optional one, taken to help make up 3 of the optional credits I needed for my diploma. I took social studies all three years, so of the 120 credits I graduated with, 18 of them were in the social studies area.
The social studies teacher I had in junior high was one of the best teachers I ever had. He didn't think that 11-14 was too young to learn about politics and how ordinary citizens - including kids - could participate. As a result, what I looked forward to when I turned 18 had nothing to do with the legal drinking age - I was happy because I was finally old enough to vote. I'd been attending political forums for the previous couple of years, and felt ready to vote at age 16 - which is why I'm in favor of lowering the voting age. There are a lot of complaints that "people" don't vote... well, if you get people in the habit of voting earlier, when they can actually vote on issues that directly affect them, you just might more people voting.
Most of what I know about these was learned on my own, usually after watching some TV series or other, and deciding to research what really happened. This is a habit I got into over 40 years ago, after watching I, Claudius and wanting to know more about it ("it" eventually turning into an interest in 1st-century Rome in general, and branching backwards enough to want to throw a brick through the TV at some of the nonsense in the "Rome" series).
There's a really cringeworthy video on YT where some woman with the most godawful pink lipstick purports to explain what parts of the TV series Reign were historically accurate. It turns out that she should have gone to the library and done more research before claiming that Henry VIII killed all 6 of his wives and that Mary Tudor had Jane Grey beheaded as soon as she reached London.
They correctly identified Mary as the Queen of Scotland, who had been married to the Dauphin - later the King - of France, and widowed when he died. They correctly named Mary's mother-in-law (played by Megan Follows, whose best-known role is Anne of Green Gables). They got everything else wrong about that marriage, everything wrong about Mary's ladies-in-waiting, the costumes were a nightmarish mishmash of everything from medieval to Victorian to a modern white wedding dress(!) in one of the wedding scenes, and in the scenes where "dancing" occurred (only a vague attempt at period dancing), the music didn't match the dance steps. There's a bizarre story arc about a werewolf or whatever it's supposed to be.
At least they remembered that England was ruled by Elizabeth. I didn't actually see the last season, since the series got progressively more ridiculous as it went on. About the best thing I can say is that the villains were the most interesting characters, and the only actress worth watching is Megan Follows. Her portrayal of Catherine de Medici is so funny sometimes, that I basically think of Reign as a comedy that's loosely based on history. What else should I think when the producers got so much of it wrong?
Farm Boy
run boy run
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Even if it doesn't, I do. Too old for the draft. Too fat, too slow, too contemplative regarding killing. Aside from terrifyingly hard career men, middle age and up is the realm of "home guard" units, if anything. Not only are we generally too fat and too slow, it's too hard to get middle aged men interested en masse in actually physically going elsewhere and shooting up people. Given how much training it takes to make an enlistee actually aim carefully and shoot to kill another human, and that the ratio of humans who actually kill humans "naturally" via homicide rates starts plummeting around 30 years old, aging men are not good natural fits for the conscription if it can be avoided. Need people who are much less inclined to drop dead in basic training, much less inclined to be self-reflective, and that is men between 18-25.
Of course, there was only about one year in which Henri II was king and Elizabeth I was queen, but given that Francois II was already dead by 1560, I'm guessing they covered that very specific year.
Ah, yes, but give us older people swords with +damage, +fire resistance, +attack speed and six linked sockets on our body armor and we'd kick ass 8 to 14 hours a day.
Zkribbler
Deity
No no no no.
We old farts are mages, hanging back, hurling fireballs and spells of confusion. Of course, our eyesight isn't the best, and so only the gods know who'll we'll hit. 
Fooey. Mages are sissies. Melee is the source of greatness. But I will accept a + to strength.No no no no.
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