I was wondering how much history Americans learn. I mean they don’t have that much of it Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! . I spent my early years with stories of Vikings and Scottish kings killing each other, but what type of events are taught as early history to US kids? The reason I got interested in this is that I was reading ‘A study in Scarlet’ where Sherlock Holmes solves a murder based on a forced marriage in the US Mormon community. The notes at the back detail the history of Salt Lake City which is fascinating and quite informative to the current state of affairs. Do students learn any of this, or just the ‘American Dream’?
I doubt the Mormon move west is taught in any great detail, since it's a relatively minor portion of American history. The focus is on the Revolution, the Civil War, and the World Wars.
Granted every countries history education is geared towards wars and kings…but there is a move in the UK to teach relative history, not just the his-story of the wealthy. It strikes me that teaching that type of history would be counter to the American Dream. I’d assume that no one wants to teach New York children about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in 1911.
I don't think that poverty is counter to the American Dream, but rather the foundation. The American Dream is starting poor, and getting rich. Granted, you can focus on people after they've gotten rich, and edit the poverty out of the telling, but there's no inherent conflict between discussing poverty and the American Dream.
I agree that poverty plays an important role in the American Dream, in particular the idea of a progression from poverty to wealth, indeed as a foundation. However the fact which remains is that a lot of people didn’t get rich and, indeed, died because others were exploiting them to get rich. I have no idea how issues like the dust bowl are dealt with but I’m guessing the class would end on an optimistic note, not with an environmental caution…?
US history education is much more than dead presidents and dates. US educational guidelines for course curriculums at both the HS and middle school levels are rather broad and comprehensive in scope. At least in the public schools in the local district here. But I suspect they are reflective of the national level. College professors in the US presume a certain amount of knowledge from incoming freshmen. After all, they are the ones contributing to what is found in the textbooks at all levels. So students entering college should have had a fairly comprehensive preparation at both middle and high school, And then there's the real world. The problems tend to be a mix of what goes on in the classroom, and how closely it is monitored by both the school administration and the parents, as far as what the teachers actually choose to teach from the required curriculum guidelines. As anybody who has been paying close attention to the national news here lately, too many teachers in too many systems can't pass their own certifications, but are still allowed to remain in the systems because there aren't enough qualified teachers to fill the ranks. Far too many teachers themselves don't have the skills, or the nerve, to challenge their students with any subject(s) that require critical thinking, because they themselves wouldn't be capable of assessing the students' analysis. They take the easiest and shortest route to the end of the year, and if they are not challenged by either the admins or the parents, they are not going to change their style. And parents get copies of school district requirements, so they should know what their child is supposed to be getting. I'm afraid too many don't pay enough attention, and neither do many admins. Most admins are too swamped dealing with the bureaucracy of the system. And for all of the requirements in history curriculums, history really gets scant attention on the HS exit exams. T-CAP and Gateway exams put most of their focus on English, Math, and Biology, while History and Geography get very little, if any, attention on exit exams.
Schools have become inferior in educating the populace. 80% of what I have learned has come from my own study independent of the mundane and literally pointless grunt work that passes for education in public schools (perhaps in private schools too). My grades at school were as average as you could get: Bs and Cs. I found no interest in the trivial (like researching an aquatic mammal-wtf?) garbage they fed me. History and social philosophy was always my passion and by visiting the school library I would spend hours absorbing information about what I enjoyed. Schools are too rigid in that they don't let you pursue a particular path that you find the most interest in. Schools used to be a place where children would learn to live on their own: managing bills, cooking, cleaning, finding a job, being a solid citizen- these are very poorly promoted in the school. Most of the people I know have no comprehension of their own government and they go off and form punk-anarchic groups without any knowledge of how the world works, and perhaps that is the saddest part of all.
History and Geography both really do take a back seat in American public schools. Most American history taught to me, for instance, before high-school was sort of the doctored "Gee isn't America great" sort of fluff that I'm sure most would expect, either that or it neither went into enough detail that I should have a feel for the context of events, just dates and names. High school was a bit better, but then I had a pair of young and fairly enthusiastic teachers right out of college hell bent on teaching their class the history that they usually don't even bother putting in the text books. This isn't to say that they tried to editorialize in class, but they'd at least not shy away from admitting that we've done a lot of really awful stuff. I can distinctly remember, however, that I only ever had one "world history and geography" class, which turned out to be quite a disappointment. I can still remember a review for our midterm in which one of the students in our class was called up to the front of the room and asked to point out China on a map, and couldn't quite manage it. I had a similar experience not so long ago when I started corresponding with a guy in Canada, and it inspired me to look at an actual map of Canada for the first time in my life, it was kind of nice to see the placement of those locations which had been, until that point, just a bunch of abstract funny names to me.
For the most part, American History concentrates on the Revolution, How the North "gloriously" won the Civil War (Is it obvious I'm a Southerner?), and how we saved everyone in both world wars, and defeated the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Basically the same "Gee isn't America Great" stuff Mystech was talking about. You don't really get into the nitty gritty until College-level Survey of American History and American Lit. courses. Kind of sad, really.
Aside from the obvious issue of military competence, there's no real difference between Robert E. Lee and John Walker Lindh. I'd agree that American history has not really given up on the Manifest Destiny, though. Or rather, the glorification of it. I think part of the problem is that textbook publishers have to appease idiots from the far left and the far right, which essentially means there's not a lot of substantative debate. There's a good, albeit very liberal, examination of that problem in Lies My History Teacher Told Me.
"American history" starts scholastically with Christopher Columbus--a sunny, hopeful, courageous story about a stalwart captain who overcame the ridiculous prejudices of royalty and the superstitious grumblings of a weak crew to triumphantly discover America by accident .... And then it rolls right through to the Revolution, and from there leaps forward to cover the run-up to the Civil War, usually starting with the Missouri Compromise (1820-ff). The Emancipation Proclamation is played off altruistically, and the whole of Reconstruction is dominated by the illusion that the liberation of black slaves was primarily good-natured and honorably-intended. Some words are given to the Industrial Revolution. World War I is blamed on incestuous Europeans, and World War II is glossed over. There's not much critical thinking taught in schools these days; it's largely reserved for AP classes and even then it's often pabulum. Unless you major or minor in history in college, you'll never be willingly exposed to a proper American history. Ask Americans about the time we invaded Russia. Most of them won't know what you're talking about. And all of this is why, if I might borrow a soapbox for a moment, so many people were pissed at Disney's "revisionism" (Pocahontas marries and lives happily ever after) or Spielberg's presentation of Amistad (while we eventually got it right, it took two tries, not one, which changes the form of the narrative moral structure and thus changes the story vitally). Most folks who see these things won't know better because they're actually taught around those points. I mean, you can sit there with Columbus' diaries in hand and point out his discussion of how he treated the indigenous peoples, and some in America still believe the discussion of Columbus' murders is an anti-American fantasy fostered by liberals. People really do believe that "the Commies started it," in terms of the Cold War. Tell them about Americans sent to undermine the Revolution, the soldiers on Russian land--they've never heard of it, and don't believe its true. Tell them about the Haymarket Martyrs. I can't count the number of people--including some in a classroom--who have responded that the Haymarket Martyrs couldn't possibly have been executed so unjustly. You can put the condemnation in front of them--"You are being executed not because you are guilty of murder but because you are Anarchists," and people will still deny it. I mean, really ... I always loved it when some student would freak out all over a professor. It happened a few times. Once in an American history class, once in a world history class, and once in a Christian history class, I can remember, at least one student would sit there with a blank look on their face and tell a PhD, "No. That didn't happen. That's just a lie." Loewen's Lies My Teachers Told Me is, indeed, a very good book. (Good call, So8.) I also recommend Cady's The American Writer, which discusses parts of history rarely discussed.
Meh ... the American/European intervention in the Russian Civil War was largely half-assed and unproductive. That isn't say we didn't do it, just that we didn't accomplish all that much. The Japanese and English were much more involved.
Which can be explained in large part because exit exams only emphasize English, math, and biology. History and geography take a backseat, and explains the significant number of athletic coaches that get thrown into the department to teach these courses. While I don't want to universally condemn these men/ women, nevertheless for the most part they are not interested in the curriculum, and will do the bare minimum in the classroom.
The lack of historical education in the US is evident by the acts of Americans today. How they fight, how they rally, and how they passively let rights be stolen from them.
American children learn what's given, meaning, the rosy version. Same in other countries. Americans as adults are free to study facts and opinions as much as they want, since the amount of information is huge in the libraries, book stores, and internet. Actually, Americans on Sciforums are well-informed Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Americans have to be ignorant of history, it's one of the tenets of our culture. You can't be aware of history and live the way we do. For example (I've used this before so maybe you've already seen it) suppose we decide we really want to understand enough about history to actually help solve the Israel/Palestine conflict. We can say hey, that's the Israelites' historic homeland, even though due to circumstances they didn't live there for a long time. You gotta give it back to the modern Israelis. Then the nearest Palestinian refugee will pop up and say OK, then you guys gotta give Arizona back to the Navajos! So you say oh, well the Palestinians have lived there most recently and for a long time, so they have the right of posession. So then a Sabra jumps up and says fine, then you guys have to give Arizona back to the Mexicans! If we understood our own history we'd all have to leave.
Frag, every piece of land in the world originally belonged to a people besides the one living there now, near as I can tell, whether that's the Norman descendants in England, or the Koreans who became the Japanese royal family, so by that logic, everybody should leave.
you think american history is boring war of independance, slavery, civil war, vietnam, WWI, WWII, cold war and other interesting things Australian History, now that is boring. according to my school textbooks, australias history started at 1771, we did nothing till 1901 where we became independant, then we had WWI and WWII and then i wrote this post lucky americans
Where as we British, have a long and well established "cough" "cough" ill spare you. I wouldve thought that the americans learn alot of their history, they all seem to be quite patriotic. Im British (well well, surprise surprise...) and this year i did the suffragettes, Nazi Germany, and Tudor history. The focus of my history education has been pre-war Germany, so it seems were obsessed with someone else's history!
(Insert Title Here) From the aforementioned Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James Loewen: It's hard to explain why this is true, but it seems to be. When I was a senior in high school, a writer I admired told me to avoid writing and literature as college endeavors and turn instead to social studies. This was at once puzzling and revealing. Thitherto in my life, I had been taught to focus on math, science, and the stuff of business. Social sciences and liberal arts were wastes of time. After I graduated from high school I moved to Oregon where, from the newspapers and such I gleaned the most disturbing perception that what people were fighting about was, essentially, the idea of a well-rounded education. Now, this was strange to me. In fact, it's part of my childhood anticommunist education, that the well-rounded education was one of the benefits of a free society; the Russians, after all, herded people into vocations and took away future choices. Well, that seemed to be what a lot of people were arguing for, that the high schools should be more voc-tech oriented (e.g. developing the early career path) as compared to preparing students with the necessary skills to carry on in the daily aspects of living. "Specialization" was to occur earlier and earlier. Writers starve, poets are crazy, and historians are inconvenient to aggressive commercial expansion. If it doesn't teach you directly how to make money or make something you can sell for money, Americans like it less and less as time goes by. Until I met that writer, who also told me to calm down and slow down, else I would burn out before I was thirty, the best advice I ever got on writing was, "You don't want to be a writer. Writers starve." I should correct that notion. Someone gave me a copy of Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet." That was exceptionally valuable, too. And about the same time. The whole point is that American students aren't supposed to like history. Listen to the way the public discourse treats people who are aware of history: they're decried as advocates for terrorism, with much the same sensibility as claiming that pacifists are bloodthirsty. Whatever opposes the blind march of the greedy has always been popularly decried. It's always an easier appeal to people's desire than to their common sense, and history screws that all up for people. History turns idiocy into a moral issue because awareness means you ought to know better than to do what you already know is wrong, anyway. Without a sense of history, Americans can rely on an anemic pleading of not having understood the wrongness of their actions. And so history is reduced to a comedy routine, an insult, a conspiracy theory, a waste of time and money and effort. In other words, a nation that prints, "In God We Trust" on our money somehow has a problem with studying history because it is, technically, a lie agreed upon. This is, in part, why conservative diatribes against proper historical examinations often rely on what seem superficial and, furthermore, defy common sense insofar as they seem somehow politically-suicidal, except that the audience doesn't care ... because in preaching to the choir, you don't need to explain why history is always wrong, immoral, or otherwise not valid for consideration. e.g. The Columbus Debate. It's not a huge issue five-hundred years later, except that we have a national holiday dedicated to a mass-murderer. First was denial--you could show people Columbus' diaries and they still had trouble swallowing it, and now it's a case of, "The people are tired of this debate. They already know about it." Well, yes. The response to the issue was to lie and lie and lie and then say the people are sick of it and never once stop to say, "Yeah, we do take a day off to honor a man who proudly mutilated and murdered thousands." If at any point the public discourse would soberly and respectfully acknowledge the propriety of the consideration, the issue would go away, because we would have had it out. But people who don't have a sense of history don't see the need to have the discussion in the first place, and this is why it's popular to characterize historical study as negative, radical, subversive, political, or otherwise dubious. And over time, the process has a huge effect. History doesn't make money. So Americans don't like it. History sometimes inhibits the making of money, so Americans revile it. These days history only seems useful to most Americans if it can be used to hurt the political credibility of an opponent. Why every tool of humanity needs to be used as a weapon is a question that only history will answer, but not yet. ____________________ • Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: Touchstone, 1996.
