The preferred term, if not “American”, would have been English or Englishman. “British” as a national designator was less than 70 years old by the time of the American Revolution and was mostly used to describe instruments of the national government…like its army.
Like on old California documents, you will see the population listed as so many males, females, children, Indians and Mexicans.
While indeed, California was technically part of the Mexican Empire for a couple of decades, the residents considered themselves “Californios” or in some cases- Spanish. They deeply resented the corrupt and unstable Mexican government.
I’m also Gen X. We throughly covered the Civil War and then reconstruction, and then skipped a few decades to belabor WWII, having not covered anything from 1900 to 1937 at all. And WWII is where we ended, despite the fact that many of us had grandfathers who had served in Korea and parents/uncles/aunts who had served in Vietnam.
I came to post something like this, but I went to public school in Las Cruces NM. So I’ll say that most of the ‘history’ taught in elementary school was minimalist, with maybe talk about thinks like the Pilgrims around the holidays, general civic studies that gave an insanely simplified overview of world history, with at least 90% of it dealing with the Western world. Basically, from that level, history started with Egyptians, moved to the Greeks/Romans, and then to Europe, before coming to America. 
Okay, that’s K-6. By middle school, understandably things got at least a little more complex, and as a NM school, we spent, similar to the quote above, a full semester learning about state history, which was, as a consequence, mostly about Spain and Mexico. And while there were apologistic elements included, it was overall pretty honest based on my later readings, although some of the Anglos in the class felt a bit threatened (probably similar to people who freak out about CRT these days).
High school History was on year of AP US history - any my professor ROXXORED (my favorite ever) so we spent a lot of time debating some of the seedier elements of our history, including how journalism informed and in some ways created the Spanish-American War. English history was a small part of the class though, but mostly in how English Common law informed early American attitudes. I will still say that Native American history and culture were largely dismissed still.
World History in high school was again, 80% European in basis. When non-European history was discussed in was in connection as to how it interacted with European/American history - such as Perry’s opening of Japan, or the East India trade.
So, in all honestly, growing up, I always felt like the US treated British History like they do about their parents stories about them growing up. Yeah, it kinda has bearing on you, and it might change how you get brought up / get allowance / are so lucky to not walk to school 10 miles in the snow, but it’s not your history and ultimately not important.
Have I mentioned I was probably a bit of a S*** as a child?
I never watched the show but was aware of it–what would a show about the Washington Irving fairy tale have that intersected with Paul Revere?
In the show, they had Ichabod Crane as a former Revolutionary War soldier, and agent for George Washington; he somehow comes back to life in modern-day Sleepy Hollow.
The protagonist, resurrected from the revolutionary period, explains to a police woman that the colonists were British, and Paul Revere would say “The regulars are coming”.
Conservatives who are always looking for more proof that American = white, have often looked to Britain. In fact, New Hampshire bill proposed by the GOP would have required that any new law have identify its precedent in the Magna Carta.
That sounds like a Republican idea.
Magna Carta was a deal with the King and the nobles. The average English guy was still screwed.
That’s interesting. I went to public schools in Ohio and Oregon, and my kid is now in school in Illinois. As far as I know, none of those States require or even offer any history courses on the history of that specific State.
My U.S. History course in High School touched on the earliest colonial efforts in North America, but that was covered better in World History, going into the colonial efforts of the entire “New World,” North, Central, and South America. The U.S. History course really picked up in the prelude/run-up to what we call the French-Indian war, the North American sideshow to the Seven Years’ War in Europe.
My dire future is already coming true, it seems.
Interesting to know, I know at least a couple of our border states do it, I had assumed it was more widespread.
This was probably one of their favorite passages (do they ever think before they talk?):
If anyone who has borrowed a sum of money from Jews dies before the debt has been repaid, his heir shall pay no interest on the debt for so long as he remains under age
I like this passage from the news item:
The high school courses went World History, U.S. History, then Government, in that order.
Of English and British history well removed from U.S. History: Roman Britain, the Seven Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, and Norman conquest were entirely removed from U.S. History and only briefly mentioned in World History when covering the downfall of the Western Roman Empire and the fate of its provinces in the dark ages. The English Reformation was mentioned when we covered religions in World History, I think; it was not mentioned at all in U.S. History even as we were tought how Protestant colonists fled Anglican England. Contrast with Martin Luther and John Calvin, both well covered in World History and later mentioned in U.S. History.
As for the sixteenth century, in World History there was a major focus on the Spanish Empire (along with China), including the sinking of the Spanish Armada in 1588 by England. This momentous event was also mentioned in U.S. History as we shifted from Spanish conquistadores to English-American colonial history. It was English class, not any History class, where we learned about Shakespeare and the Elizabethian era. The explorations of John Cabot were covered in World History with little to no background specific to England aside from the geography (the theme was European expeditions and claims in the age of discovery), but it would be mentioned along with the first English colonies in U.S. History.
Seventeenth century English history featured more prominently in U.S. History for obvious reasons, but not in isolation as there were also Spanish, Dutch, French, and even Swedish colonies. We were given some background on all of them in U.S. History. Things mentioned, relating to England: the Plymouth and London companies, the Puritan separtist movement, the practices of indenture and slavery, mercantillism and the triangular trade, cash crops, the early colonies of Roanoake, Jamestown, Plymouth and the Mayflower, and Massachusetts Bay, Puritanism, Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and Rhode Island, the Civil War, the Commonwealth, the Rump Parliament and the Navigation Acts, the Quaker movement and William Penn, Oliver Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland, the Protectorate, the Restoration, Bacon’s Rebellion, King Philip’s War, the Whigs and Tories, and the Glorious Revolution and its bill of rights. Most of this history not occuring in the western hemisphere was covered lightly, as background to the Navigation Acts or the establishment of various colonies. None of these events were covered in World History except the triangular trade and the establishment of colonies; World History touched on England and later Great Britain during this period in terms of leading the industrial revolution rather than geopolitical history. It wouldn’t be until the late eighteenth and early to mid nineteenth century that we covered the British Empire.
As for eighteenth century British history taught in our U.S. History course, from what I can remember, we sort of skipped from the late 1600s to the French and Indian war. The dates of each colony’s establishment was given to us in picture form but the focus in the early 1700s was on the Enlightenment, and Great Awakening… in Europe and its effects in the colonies, especially its influence on founders of the nation a generation later. I think a whole week was dedicated for this. This is where, in U.S. History, we learn about John Locke, Renee Descartes, Voltaire, Isaac Newton, Martin Luther, and John Calvin. There were some influential colonial ministers and pamphleteers who I have now forgotten. The only one I can remember is Cato’s Letters. That’s just about it until the Seven Years / French and Indian War, which had extensive coverage and background not only in Europe but also the Algonquins and Iroquois. The Treaty of Paris was covered, so was Pontiac’s uprising and the proclamation that banned colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains. After which we are into the events immediately preceding the Revolutionary War: the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, the Boston Massacre, the Sons of Liberty and Boston Tea Party, the Intolerable Acts, the first Continental Congress and its Declaration of Rights and Grievances, Lexington and Concord, Paul Revere, and the minutemen militia, and finally the Second Continental Congress and Declaration of Independence. From which the course enters U.S. History proper.
~Max
To be fair, we don’t cover that in English schools, either.
Apart from the fact that you’d have next to no scope for most modern laws (and, by the way, it has a lot about the rights and privileges of the Church, about which presumably your constitutionalists might have something to say), there are only two or three provisions still extant in English law, AIUI.
I suppose it would be otiose to ask if they’ve actually read it?
I have a Russian friend who got her PhD in the Soviet Union and she said that it was required that you include quotes from Lenin as part of your dissertation. It was standard practice to write your dissertation and then put some random quotes from Lenin in the document that had no relevance to it.
That kind of “magic words” thinking seems common in totalitarian utopianism, whether it’s the Communist Party of thee USSR, the GOP, Pravda, or Fox News.