To second Amarinth , you are required to take a semester of “Washington State History” in Washington State high schools. (Actually, the class is half NW history and half regional geography.) And just like you, my school’s football coach taught the class. That meant virtually everything in the class seemed to be linked to football. For example, when Idaho senator William Borah was mentioned, my teacher said that reminded him that Borah High School in Boise was a big football power. The Monday after a game was always devoted to a breakdown of the game. That’s a shame; I actually would read my textbook outside of class because the subject’s pretty interesting.
Our Louisiana History class was taught by our football coach as well. Sometimes it seems that some things transcend region differences. I wonder if you can find the hockey coach teaching Alberta history in Canada and the soccer coach teaching Tuscany history in Italy.
Ah, good old Waterloo Village. But I don’t know, my friends at college always roll their eyes when I start talking about the Jersey Devil and cranberry bogs… (and nobody in California believes that New Jersey is famous for its (delicious) corn and tomatoes…)
It was one of the chapter titles in the (seemingly) ancient textbook that we used in class. I think the point was that our state has diverse geography or something. Personally, I thought it was hilarious in my college studio class when someone said “the home of skiing and onions” as a response to being asked where he was from. Everyone from NJ (8 out of 24) erupted because we all remember that chapter title in the little light blue book.
Arkansas, and we had to take it in eighth grade.
We moved in the middle of my sixth grade year. The first school I went to was doing Arkansas history that year. The second wasn’t. So apparently, it wasn’t a requirement at the time, or at least what year it was taught wasn’t a state law. I never encountered it again. Though we usually got drummed into us (in science, or in a social studies course) the claim that Arkansas was the one state that could be walled off from the rest of the country and have virtually everything it needed without having to import anything – oil, natural gas, coal, bauxite (for aluminum production), water, forests, etc., even diamonds. That many of the other states would have been just as happy if we were in fact walled off from the rest of the country was, in most cases, glossed over.
When I was in CO we made a lot of models of native buildings - cliff dwellings and pit houses, and did other art projects connected to the Anasazi. We had a pioneer block too in the fifth grade - no idea if it’s a part of regular curriculum, but we made homemade butter and a bunch of other stuff (I brought in an antique hand-crank ice cream maker to the initial delight and eventual resentment of my classmates).
I get a little twinge when I go off to whatever mission and see the kids on their field trips. I only did half of fourth grade in the CA public school system, so I missed out on the typical stuff.
I took Montana history in 8th grade. We didn’t have to memorize the counties, but we did have to label them on a map, along with the county number used on license plates (Gallatin County, where I was from, is number 6). We also made a map labeling the mountain ranges, rivers, and the traditional homes of Montana’s Indian tribes. We took field trips to Elkhorn (a silver-mining ghost town), to Helena to see the state capitol building, and to the Big Hole National Battlefield (not the one Custer was at).
My sister took Minnesota history in 6th grade. I don’t know if there were any field trips involved. My father also took Minnesota history in 6th grade, and was told that his class would go to the state capitol in St. Paul if they were good. His class was not good (he doesn’t know what they did that was so bad, exactly), and was the only class that anyone in the town could remember that did not get to go.
I think high school students in Oklahoma are required to take one semester of Oklahoma history, which is usually taught their freshman year (it was for me anyway).
At least half the semester involved the Indian Territory years and other things related to forcible Indian relocation. The other half seemed to primarily concern Governor “Alfalfa” Bill Murray and Governor Marland, and the Tulsa Race Riot. There were probably other topics in there too but it’s been a while and I forget. I do remember learning that there are precisely 77 counties in the state, and Osage is the largest and Marshall is the smallest.
Nowadays I understand that high school students have to pass a state mandated standardized test to graduate, that includes an entire section on Oklahoma history.
No Illinois history from what I recall. I went to Catholic school through 8th grade – I don’t know what the public school kids were learning. Somewhere along the line I did learn that Mayor Daley (the Elder) was the most powerful man in the world. He could raise votes from the dead. :eek: 
I grew up in VA and didn’t have VA history, but my older siblings did.
Nope! Ha! I went to school in Ohio, and am going to college in Ohio, and in both schools I have taken a state/local history (local in HS, state/regional in college) but all were electives.
Brendon Small
I took a full year of mandatory Louisiana History in 8th grade (1998-1999). It was actually one of my favorite classes. We did a unit on Cajun dancing and another on Louisiana architecture, which has actually come in handy for recognizing general architectural styles. One of the big projects was designing a house in a particular style, both elevation and floorplan - mine was Italian Renaissance Revival, I believe. I also remember being given a blank map at some point for a test and having to fill in all the parishes (and maybe the parish seats as well). I think we also went pretty indepth about the different American Indian tribes that lived in the state, and I remember watching a video about Poverty Point and Indian mounds. We also watched Louisiana Story. I believe we also had a Cajun food potluck. So all in all, it was a pretty cool class. To be fair, I was in the gifted program then, so we often got to have nifty extras that the regular classes didn’t, but this was all in a public school in mid-city Baton Rouge.
Catholic school in both grammar and high school. As part of American History in the 6th or 7th grade, California History was included. I seem to remember history about the missions in an earlier grade but can’t remember when. We made mini-missions out of sugar cubes with toothpick or popsicle crosses.
Much of my high school California history (probably in my freshman or sophomore year) had something to do with Spanish land grants, Indian tribes, missionaries and Russians traders at what is now Fort Ross.
At UC Berkeley I also took a mandatory 1 unit class in California History, but I understand that it was discontinued a long time ago.
Texas history for a full year in 7th grade (1983-84).
We did not have to memorize all 254 counties. Thank god…
Wisconsin, no, but teachers tried hard to point out Wisconsinites contribution to the world…it was always short. Go ‘Fighting’ Bob LaFollette!
Sam, might I ask respectfully why you dislike Texas? You stated that feeling twice in this thread.
Looks like I’m the fourth person here who grew up in Illinois, and has no recollection of a state-specific history course.
We did have “social studies” in grade school, which gave way to history in high school. I do recall spending fully one semester on our country’s first 50 years or so, (we had seemingly every first settler’s name drilled into us for no good reason) then everything after the first Thanksgiving up to 1950 was skimmed over very rapidly in the second semester.
But we did learn about Deaf Smith County and the eponymous Deaf Smith, hero of the Texas Revolution. Cool county name. Cool guy. Even cooler was his real first name, Erastus.
I was permanently impacted by seventh grade Texas History, and grew up worshipping Sam Houston.
I stated it the second time because after someone implied that people from Texas always like to brag about Texas. Just wanted to make it clear that that’s not always true, especially not in my case.
I know Texas and Texans well enough to know that whenever someone asks why I don’t like the place, I should ignore the question. I bet I can guess where you’re from. 