I voted sorta, but then remembered that I got a good deal of 20th century history in 9th grade, though only up through Watergate (I graduated in 2005).
The real crime? I did not learn about the Civil War until 10th grade, and then we spent maybe a week on it, if that. Most of what I know, I learned from reading on my own. We’d always get up to the War of 1812 and then be out of time because we spent so much damned time on the Colonial Period and the Revolution. Townshend Act! Stamp Act! Articles of Freakin’ Confederation! Appomattox? What the hell is that? And who cares about the War of 1812?
My brother had a whole year of American history in 8th grade and I think they might have gotten to 1788.
We got into WWII and were on the baby boom when time ran out.
I also took a modern European history class my senior year. That started with the formation of a single Germany in culminating officially in 1871 and we were on the post-Yugoslavia Balkan conflict at year’s end.
Graduated in 1995; we covered quite a bit of the Cold War…I remember having to memorize key events during that, though damned if I can remember them now.
We also covered WW2 in depth, and I took a Modern World History course (elective) that endeavored to encompass worldwide history from 1400-early 1990s. The only bit I think I’ve retained from that is some elements from various Israeli/Palestinian conflicts.
Edited to add: Pretty ignorant about the Civil War—I think we raced through it in 10th grade (U.S. History), though we certainly covered some of it before then. That could be just because I grew up in Maryland, so state history in 4th grade included some Civil War stuff.
When I was in HS, history class was wall-to-wall pilgrims and colonial stuff. An entire semester of nothing but pilgrims was very tedious, and has since been purged from my head. At this point, I remember no details, but it just seemed like trivial minutia to the level of “On Thursday, May 4, John Hancock and Samuel Adams had lunch at Quincy’s tavern. John had roast beef and Sam had some sort of sausages.” Perhaps I embellish, but the reality was that it was very tedious and boring and I have no idea why anyone thought we needed to know about pilgrims in such detail.
There wasn’t a good answer for my experience, which is that we always got to WWII but no further, except in AP European History where we got through the Marshall Plan and AP US History where we got through the Civil Rights era (just barely - we raced through to make it before the test) and that was the year that one of the big essay questions in AP US History was on MLK vs. Malcolm X and we opened up our booklets and there was some quiet "YES!!"es that had to be quashed by the proctors. Evidently most classes did NOT make it that far and there was a huge uproar so they changed the parameters of the test after that year.
ETA - it goes for other classes too - I was a music minor in college and even so I have very little idea of what happened after Debussy unless we’re talking popular music.
I picked that we covered the 20th Century well, but there’s a caveat. We covered it well through WWII, then barely through the Eisenhower administration, and not at all after that.
We would spend excruciating amounts of time on the Colonial period, the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and Civil War, then have about a week to cram everything else in. We usually made to about the middle of WWI. In elementary school, in middle school, in high school. What I know about the history of the past century is cobbled-together bits I’ve found out on my own.
Canadian high school, graduated in 1991. I think Grade 9 history was the ancient world, Grade 10 was medieval/Renaissance, Grade 11 was European history from the French Revolution until the beginning of WWII and Grade 12 was Canadian history. I might be misremembering somewhat.
When I was in high school, the 20th century wasn’t history.
I had US history in 8th grade and again in 11th grade (which would have been 1983-84). I don’t remember exactly how far we got either time, except that HS US History must have covered at least part of the 20th century because I remember reading The Jungle and The Ugly American for that class.
The biggest gap in my high school history was that we didn’t really study the history of other parts of the world besides the US, except for a semester of “Global Studies” that looked at China, the USSR, and the Middle East.
I took US history in Grade 13*. We spent a lot of time on the Civil war, that was our major essay section. We were assigned topics, mine was on Charles Sumner I think we may have reached the teapot dome stuff and President McKinley, but I may be misremembering and have just read to the end of my text book. This was in 1987.
*At my highschol, in Ontario we had two grade 13 (the pre-university year that was prerequisites for university)history classes offered, US History and Canadian History. Pretty much the people in those classes were ones who were going into Arts or Humanities and didn’t want to/need to/couldn’t take math or science courses. Very non compulsory.
I don’t recall high school ever getting past Reconstruction. I always figured they were deliberately avoiding as much modern history as possible to avoid controversy. I never heard a word about the Vietnam War for example - it must have been my mid teens before I was even clear that the Vietnam and Korean wars were separate. Not one word about the Cold War, the Civil Rights struggles in the 60s, either World War, or pretty much anything involving people still alive.
I’ve often said, by the way, that I know a hell of a lot more about the Punic Wars than the Korean War, which my father actually fought in. In fact, I may know more about the Punic Wars than my DAD knows about the Korean War.
My theory, which could very well be totally off-base, is that the people who set the curriculum lived through those things and therefore don’t think of them as “history” or as something that anyone would need to be taught about in a classroom.
“History’s what happened in the past. I remember the Vietnam War: it was the present when that happened.”
I went to high school in the late seventies. Watergate and Vietnam were still considered current events not history. As I recall, our history classes ended with the Cold War and the Moon landing.
I know we talked a lot about the Civil Rights Movement. A lot of Civil War too. I remember the American Revolution in middle school. A lot of Civil Rights there also. I am white, but I went to a predominantly black middle school.
I’m suprised other Dopers took so many history courses in high school. My high school (about 600 students) only offered two; US History for a year and Northwest History for a semester. We only got to the Progressive Era in American history;thankfully I was such a voracious reader that very little of history was new to me. We took lot of social studies classes in middle and high school, but those were mostly geography with a little civics thrown in.
