I was in 7th grade in Ohio and we definitely covered Ohio history that year since the highlight of the year was a trip to Columbus. In 8th grade, it was a similar focus on US History and we did the stereotypical 8th grade field trip to D.C.
Really? I’d have thought that Alfred’s reign in particular would be of special interest in England, being more or less the start of England.
7th grade is (or was anyway) reserved for the teaching of Texas History in Texas public schools. It mostly had 4 main segments: Pre-Texas exploration/colonization, Texas settlement/Revolution, Independence/statehood, and everything else. Definitely kind of an idealized history of the state, at least as taught in 1985.
If we covered it, I don’t remember it! I’ve just had a look at the current school curriculum, Key stage 2 (ages 7-11), and it looks like there’s a slice on the emergence of England, that gives Alfred as optional
the Viking and Anglo-Saxon struggle for the Kingdom of England to the time of Edward
the Confessor
Examples (non-statutory)
This could include:
Viking raids and invasion
resistance by Alfred the Great and Athelstan, first king of England
further Viking invasions and Danegeld
Anglo-Saxon laws and justice
Edward the Confessor and his death in 1066
Post Key Stage 2, it’s 1066 and all the rest onwards
I went to public schools in Maryland and Pennsylvania. In 5th grade the state of Maryland was covered, though certain embarrassing details were white-washed. We had to learn the names of all the counties in the state and were tested on that in several ways because knowing the names of all the counties in your state is very important. I know that’s true because I found out they did the same thing during 5th or 6th grade in Pennsylvania. I could ask around and see if they do that here in Rhode Island, shouldn’t be hard with only 5 counties, although we have a fictional county that might throw off some students. I’m sure there’s a decent amount of time spent on state history here.
On the east coast the modern state histories includes the time when the evil British overlords trod on us. Some states would have no connection to those times as far as state history goes.
Yeah, there’s 67 counties in Florida. No way were we going to memorize those. We didn’t have a dedicated state history course, but in U.S. history special attention was given to Ponce de Leon, St. Augustine, East and West British Florida and the fact that we didn’t support the revolution, the Seminole Wars, etc.
~Max
I’d say “no” that Americans don’t generally think of British history as ours. I do think we learned more Britain in school than others , even in Western Civ or World History, though we did definitely learn others, too. I know we learned the Hapsburg deformities, the Sun King, Napoleon, etc. It’s interesting that some said 10% German. I don’t recall any German history in my school prior to the 20th century; it was always England, France, and Spain. For the actual colonization of the Americas, more Spain than France. I recall Peninsulares, Criollos, etc. as vocabulary words. Thought I’m southeast, so we never learned the missions in school. Had significant section on the spread of Islam in junior high. I don’t remember any of it, though, I admit. It doesn’t have the cultural presence of Napoleon or Marie Antoinette or Henry VIII. I don’t remember the War of the Roses, either, but I don’t think we spent as much time on it.
I think it’s logical that we learn more about British - most places teach history as it connects to the present and local, and the United States is more heavily influenced by British laws/culture/history than by others, as they were the primary colonizers (the Natives being much more wiped out, both physically and culturally here than in some other places). The same is true in other countries - they learn much more about those countries more culturally connected to them or having more influence on them. Not saying that’s the way it should be, but many, many countries operate that way. And I do think it’s better schools tend to teach more native history now.
I agree with those who say we cut off as we get closer to the present. For my school, for post-American-Revolution Britain we learn the Industrial Revolution - mostly steam engines and textiles. And some of that is before. For France, the Revolution is about all we cover after. Excepting Napoleonic wars, Spain itself I don’t even think got any attention after 1700. We basically got their colonization of the Americas, a very broad overview of how they (particularly New Spain) worked and then they’re a declining Empire. After that they’re only mentioned in the context of US expansionism. Or heck, maybe there was more and I’ve just forgotten it all. For US history, I don’t think we even made it to WWII most of the time. It was Gilded Age, WWI (mostly just Lusitania, Sedition Act, Flu, and League of Nations, rather than actual war), Roaring Twenties, Great Depression, and “whoops, we’re out of time”
Caesar’s campaign in Gaul (including versus some Germanic tribes), Clovis the Merovingian, Charlemagne’s conquest of the Saxons and Lombards and coronation as Holy Roman Emperor, Otto the Great, the Hanseatic League, etc? The Protestant reformation at least - surely you learned about Martin Luther’s 95 theses? As written above we covered Martin Luther in our U.S. History class.
~Max
This was certainly the case when I was in school in the 1970s, but the era offered a lot of opportunities to learn the post Depression stuff from older family members, film, and TV in a more detailed and accessible manner than the classroom offered.
Protestant Reformation, okay. Didn’t think of that in a specifically German context, though, of course I should. I remember that we learned about Charlemange, but not what he did (I totally agree with up-thread comments about lack of retention). I don’t think I learned about Otto the Great in school (name is familiar, though), or the Hanseatic League. While I did know about Germanic tribes and Caesar, that was taught in the context of Roman history - nothing except how it affected Rome was taught to us. They might as well have been the Sea Peoples, for what else was learned about them. Unless I’ve forgotten that, too.
We learned about Gutenberg and his printing press. But none of it had to do with any German country’s government, social mores, economic systems, internal politics, etc. It was only specific things that affected other countries with no context about the originating culture/environment.
When I was in high school in California in the mid -90s we got to the 60s-70s Vietnam era in depth in my final history class in 11th grade and then the 80s and early 90s were a random grab-bag. The final history project was picking a big news story since 1980 and doing a presentation on it, mine was the 1991 Gulf War but others picked the recent Presidential election or North Korea (since it was also making the news at the time)
I didn’t take 12th grade history since my 11th Grade history was Honors but from what I heard from friends it was basically the same thing just having to do it a year behind the Honors classes.
I estimated 10% because while they may only come in toward the end of most European history survey courses, they make a BIG splash.
I actually did, but it wasn’t required. I took an excellent Florida history class at FSU as an elective plus worked on a lot of political campaigns. So, I could tell you a lot about counties in Florida and their demographics/history. But that was just nerd stuff in college.
It’s still a weird thing to have to memorise for a middle school or high school class.
It’s a sad comment on Florida’s electoral chaos that, as a Californian, I can name more counties in Florida than in my home state.
I’ve spent a lot of time in California and driven a huge amount of the state. I just don’t see as many signs about ‘Now entering XYZ county’ as I’ve seen in Florida.
Could very well be that I wasn’t paying attention or there’s just so many signs for various freeways in California.
It may be that the counties in California are bigger than the ones in East Coast states, so you don’t cross into a new county as frequently when you’re driving down the freeway. That said, I know in my area there are signs on the smaller two lane highways announcing Placer/El Dorodo/Amador/Sacramento counties. I’m not sure about the freeways.
ETA: I just checked Google Street View; there are indeed signs marking the Yolo County line on US-50 and I-5.
I’ve seen the signs, but they aren’t very prominent. You always know when you cross into Orange County (CA) because people stop letting you change lanes in front of them.
I had to take North Carolina history and Texas history in consecutive years due to my family moving. In North Carolina we had to learn all 100 counties (although we learned and were tested on them in groups, as I recall). Thank God we didn’t have the same requirement for all 257 counties in Texas.
There’s a You Only Live Once County?
I find it interesting how much “American history” is colonial history in nature, but presented as if colonial history was entirely separate from European history.
For example, my eyes were rather opened to understand that the so-called “French and Indian” war was just one dimension of the broader “Seven Years War”, which was arguably the first “world war” (being transatlantic in character).
This makes me, as an American, see the American revolution in a much less sympathetic light. King George was good enough to bankrupt himself in defense of our colonies, asking little more than taxation to to repay that obligation, and to respect the peace treaty by refraining from westward expansion. And what did we do? Cooked up a tax protest as pretext to revolt while he was still weakened from defending us, went about bragging of “freedom” while slavery was still the law in half the country! Ugly business, just an opportunistic land grab.
I assume you were joking, but yes, sort of. Of course doesn’t stand for “you only live once”, rather Wikipedia says it’s probably a corruption of a native word.