When I went to high school in the late 70s in Canada, History wasn’t a mandatory subject, and so I didn’t choose it. You needed so many credits, from so many disciplines, and I believe I covered off my requirements by taking Geography and French instead.
I also wanted to take typing, but my mum wouldn’t allow me: “why would you need to learn to type?”
Good lord, I’ve slept since then. How am I supposed to remember? It was a blur then and now, 30 years later, it’s even more of a blur.
Wow. I forgot about starting this thread. I actually goofed. What actually happened was that we skipped from the Civil War to WWI, barely finished that, but also had a project where we had to interview a WWII veteran. We weren’t tested on the latter part, though.
Still, the theme of running out of time was still there. Maybe I should make a poll about that.
BTW, and that last option is for any unusual answer.
In Kentucky history at the elementary and middle school level was called Social Studies. In 5th grade we mainly studied the age of exploration up to the Civil War. I think we also touched on WWII and the Kennedy Assassination. 7th grade was the history of Russia, the Eastern Bloc, China, and Japan and in 8th grade it was back to the age of exploration through the Civil War.
9th grade was mainly civics and government, although we had to study the history of Islam after the Shah booked and Khomeini took over. 11th grade was American history again and we made it to WWII, with a bit of room left over in the last few days for Korea, the Red Scare, Kennedy, and the Civil Rights Movement. If you wanted to learn about Vietnam you had to read a book or ask somebody who had been there. (I did both.)
12th grade had World history from the beginnings of civilization to at least the Thirty Years War though I don’t remember if the class went beyond that. I also took a more modern world history course which went to WWII.
Anything missing from the grade school curriculum, I had to fill in with college courses or reading books and old papers.
I graduated in 2000, and we got to the end of the 80’s/start of the 90’s (we did cover a bit about Desert Storm.) It seems I went to one of the few high schools that wasn’t stupid when it came to history…the classes never “started over again from the beginning” with each year, they’d pick up where the previous year left off.
9th grade: European history…a little about a lot, since there is a lot of it. We touched upon a lot of things I can’t for the life of me remember a damn thing about…except the Renaissance. I know we did a lot about that because it crossed over with our 9th grade English class and we had a class-Ren fair during the year.
10th grade: US History. From colonization to early 20th. Obviously the Revolutionary and Civil Wars got most of the time, but I remember the end of the semester being focused on Ellis Island, immigration, and whatnot.
11th grade: 20th century US History. Basically, from WWI onward.
12th grade: No required history class, though lots of people (including myself) took AP US History because the teacher was cool. That’s the only time we had the sterotypical “blitz through from colonial days to 20th century.” I think we got to the middle of the cold war.
(Graduated 1991)
We always made it to WWII and ran out of time. As far as I know, nothing happened between 1945 and 1973 or so when I came on the stage.
In my senior year, we were required to take a semester long “Current Events” course. My class was largely dominated by the Gulf War.
I’m pretty sure my US History class just managed to cover the Vietnam War before the school year ended.
I picked “well”, since there was no option for the actual experience (1981-82)- Glossed over the Progressive Era, about 1 week on WW1 and League of Nations, week or 2 on the Great Depression. Spent 5 freakin’ weeks on WWII (teacher was a vet - European theatre). Rushed through Korean War/Sputnick/Cuban Missile Crisis in the last week of school. Kind of made the bickering over who got the new editions of the text book (ended with Reagan’s inauguration) and who got stuck with the previous edition (ended with the moon landing) pointless. (There weren’t enough copies of the new book for every student to get one at the beginning of the school year - and for some reason, we never got a second shipment).