Teaching the US history in schools and college

[StateBoiler]

How should the US history be teached in shcools and college ?

I read this on Facebook.

Your first problem.

My largest criticism of my history education was the world stopped in 1945. I took a 20th century history class in college as an elective for exactly this reason. I was there at least able to get into the 1970s (took the class 2003ish). There's no reason a high school student now shouldn't be able to get to the end of the Cold War.

We should however teach history as it is. People should not be held up as immortals but they also shouldn't be held up as they made one mistake so they're evil. The moral standards of today are going to be very outdated in 50 years even if you think you are being full of virtue now.

You should also report on people of consequence that affected the most lives. "Person on the ground" perspectives are fine but are mostly incredibly overrated. For example I just listened to a podcast on the 1872 election, and in it it includes an anecdote of Susan B. Anthony trying to go vote. Nice story about suffragists, but had absolutely zero to deal with what happened in the 1872 election where women's suffrage was not a consideration at all.

[StateBoiler]

How should the US history be teached in shcools and college ?

I read this on Facebook.

Your first problem.

My largest criticism of my history education was the world stopped in 1945. I took a 20th century history class in college as an elective for exactly this reason. I was there at least able to get into the 1970s (took the class 2003ish). There's no reason a high school student now shouldn't be able to get to the end of the Cold War.

We should however teach history as it is. People should not be held up as immortals but they also shouldn't be held up as they made one mistake so they're evil. The moral standards of today are going to be very outdated in 50 years even if you think you are being full of virtue now.

You should also report on people of consequence that affected the most lives. "Person on the ground" perspectives are fine but are mostly incredibly overrated. For example I just listened to a podcast on the 1872 election, and in it it includes an anecdote of Susan B. Anthony trying to go vote. Nice story about suffragists, but had absolutely zero to deal with what happened in the 1872 election where women's suffrage was not a consideration at all.

That's one thing that's good about the teaching of History in France. The cirriculum in senior year of highschool is the period 1945-"present" (when I was a senior in 2011-2012, our history program ended either in 2001 with 9/11 or 2007 with Nicolas Sarkozy's election, I don't remember exactly. We got to learn about both French and World History of the second half of the 20th century. The presidents, their policies and elections, the May 1958 crisis, the 30 Glorious (years) for France, and then the Cold War and European construction for the World (even our US History was actually pretty decent; and the irony is our US History education in highschool to the contrary only started say with the 1890s or so, as that's when the US became a major economic power and started imposing itself on the world stage, before that it was essentially a backwater. But starting with the Spanish-American War at the latest we covered all the major things in US History).

To dead0man, I had a separate world history class from U.S. history class in high school.

To Lechessauer, there's one reason that's tied to a real reason and one that's schedule-based.

1.) By the time teachers get to World War II, the semester is over. That's curriculum-driven. In the history we always did from lower grade social studies up to high school U.S. history, you talk about the Indians that were here before, you talk about the first European explorers (Verrazano, Jamestown, establishment of colonies, French and Indian War), the Revolution, the Articles of Confederation era a little on the War of 1812, antebellum era, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, World War I, the Depression, and World War II. And then you're staring at Christmas or the summer.

2.) The 2nd reason that was stated by my history professor in college for the "why don't we discuss post-1945 that much?" is history is not settled yet. Which is valid to a point, but by the time I was a college student, Vietnam for example was pretty much settled. In 2021, I think students could learn up until the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. I can get the argument of 9/11 as an example not being considered settled in the modern world.

For reason #1, you'd have to cut something out. My U.S. History class in high school spent maybe 20 minutes on the Civil War (it was heavily covered when I was in 8th grade in contrast which was North Carolina history) and that was based on curriculum, it seems to be what got cut to allow for some post-World War II discussion.

[StateBoiler]

How should the US history be teached in shcools and college ?

I read this on Facebook.

Your first problem.

My largest criticism of my history education was the world stopped in 1945. I took a 20th century history class in college as an elective for exactly this reason. I was there at least able to get into the 1970s (took the class 2003ish). There's no reason a high school student now shouldn't be able to get to the end of the Cold War.

We should however teach history as it is. People should not be held up as immortals but they also shouldn't be held up as they made one mistake so they're evil. The moral standards of today are going to be very outdated in 50 years even if you think you are being full of virtue now.

You should also report on people of consequence that affected the most lives. "Person on the ground" perspectives are fine but are mostly incredibly overrated. For example I just listened to a podcast on the 1872 election, and in it it includes an anecdote of Susan B. Anthony trying to go vote. Nice story about suffragists, but had absolutely zero to deal with what happened in the 1872 election where women's suffrage was not a consideration at all.

That's one thing that's good about the teaching of History in France. The cirriculum in senior year of highschool is the period 1945-"present" (when I was a senior in 2011-2012, our history program ended either in 2001 with 9/11 or 2007 with Nicolas Sarkozy's election, I don't remember exactly. We got to learn about both French and World History of the second half of the 20th century. The presidents, their policies and elections, the May 1958 crisis, the 30 Glorious (years) for France, and then the Cold War and European construction for the World (even our US History was actually pretty decent; and the irony is our US History education in highschool to the contrary only started say with the 1890s or so, as that's when the US became a major economic power and started imposing itself on the world stage, before that it was essentially a backwater. But starting with the Spanish-American War at the latest we covered all the major things in US History).

To dead0man, I had a separate world history class from U.S. history class in high school.

To Lechessauer, there's one reason that's tied to a real reason and one that's schedule-based.

1.) By the time teachers get to World War II, the semester is over. That's curriculum-driven. In the history we always did from lower grade social studies up to high school U.S. history, you talk about the Indians that were here before, you talk about the first European explorers (Verrazano, Jamestown, establishment of colonies, French and Indian War), the Revolution, a little on the War of 1812, antebellum era, the Civil War of course, the Gilded Age, World War I, the Depression, and World War II. And then you're staring at Christmas or the summer.

2.) The 2nd reason that was stated by my history professor in college for the "why don't we discuss post-1945 that much?" is history is not settled yet. Which is valid to a point, but by the time I was a college student, Vietnam for example was pretty much settled.

For reason #1, you'd have to cut something out. My U.S. History class in high school spent maybe 20 minutes on the Civil War (it was heavily covered when I was in 8th grade in contrast which was North Carolina history) and that was based on curriculum, it seems to be what got cut to allow for some post-World War II discussion.

And I think that's the point. In France, history becomes a major subject by 3rd-4th grade at the latest, so all the "old" stuff is known by everyone, so the last year that covers anything that happened before 1848 (fall of the last French king Louis-Philippe) is sophomore year of highschool. Thus the last two years of high school can be dedicated to modern history (1848-1945 in junior year and 1945-2000s in senior year).

Also, in highschool we essentially skipped the world wars as those were more than covered in 9th grade, and everyone knows about them anyway.

In the US history education probably starts too late. The 'old periods" are covered in detail from 6th-8th grades and then sophomore year is a summary of them.

I started learning about history probably in 2nd grade/7 years old. It's a standard part of just about every social studies program (social studies is in an education context history, government, geography, the world, roughly you take it from 2nd grade to 8th grade). It's just what do you really learn of history beyond 25000 foot stuff at 8 years old? I was helping my wife's cousin with his homework some months ago. He was 11 and learning about Alexander the Great.

My required classes in high school where you go into a more regimented learning program was civics as a freshman (some school systems have this a senior class), then you picked either world history or world geography (I took both), then you took U.S. history. These were all single semester classes. If I was made dictator I'd probably make U.S. history a year-long class that would go up until the 1990s at the present point in time, and change world history and world geography to "European History" and "Rest of World History", each a semester.