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Just Passed GCSEs, Still Never Heard 'Holy Roman Empire' or 'Byzantine Empire/ERE'

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In 5th and 6th grade the emphasis was on the Viking Age (Dark Ages), European Middle Ages and the Early-modern era, of course with everything revolving around Sweden, the rest of the world barely existing other than as targets for Swedish expansion, Viking raids or exploration and trade... Very brief mention of WW2 revolving around 30 minutes or so, where apparently I was the only one in a class of 40 that had ever heard of WW2, or the you-know-what banned topic revolving around Romas, Jews etc. The early modern age was dropped due to political concerns about stormaktstiden (Sweden's period as a European great power is very controversial these days), so nobody but me ever got to read about it in my class, but since my teacher knew about my interest in the period he did provide me with material for the subject.

In 7th grade we had a brief and very simplified chronological walkthrough of the history of mankind, covering pretty much everything interesting at least briefly. After that we got to put some effort into the history of Ancient India, China and the Americas. We did the ridiculously simplified chronological walkthrough again in 8th grade, and with some effort finally put on classical cultures of Europe. We put loads of time into WW1 and WW2 in 9th grade, but hardly enough and mostly by watching various documentaries and old newsreels (was still fun though).

High School was quite different, with a lot more emphasis on very modern history, ideas, theory and academic method. While we did get to do a chronological walkthrough again in first grade, while a lot more in-depth than in primary school. Didn't get to do any history at all in second grade. On top of mandatory subjects we got to choose subjects (we were only 6 students in the class) in history to focus on in third grade, so I chose Finnish history, Cold War, Early-modern period and the Industrial Revolution. Out of my choices only Finnish history was accepted though, as I made a good case for choosing that subject since I proved that the class was obviously very ignorant about both Finland and it's history, not to mention both I and the teacher agreed that Finland is a very important neighbour to Sweden, thus it could be considered relevant for the Swedish youngsters to learn more about Finland - I got to assist my teacher in the teaching of course since I was more knowledgeable about it than him or any other student or teacher around. Other than that we put a lot of time in third grade into gender history and the history of the city of Stockholm (we had to watch a lot of 1900s to early 70s newsreels to see the radical transformation of the city during that period).

But none of this could match Paradox games or military history at college - or traditional self-teaching.
 
I don't really remember getting much history in elementary school. In high school, I took "Our Cultural Heritage" in Grade 9 which was basically a survey of English and French history from Roman times to the 19th century. Grade 10 was Canadian history with a mix of stuff on European exploration, treaties with the natives, immigration, Canada's role in the world wars and some political history like the King-Byng affair and the October Crisis. Grade 11 was ancient history with the standard focus on the near east, ancient Greece and Rome.
 
In Italy, the teaching of history is standardized and eurocentric, but not really nationalistic.

High school:

First year, ancient world, greek world
Second year, Rome
Third year, middle ages and Renaissance
Fourth year, modern age, from Renaissance to Napoleon, pretty much
Fifth year, 19th and 20th centuries

There is some minor emphasis on italian history, but we study european history overall, with some attention given to the occasional non-european subject, like the Ottomans / Arabs. To be honest, I cannot help but think that studying national history ONLY is the most retarded thing one could do.
 
I've had a similar experience to the OP. I learnt about the existence of the Holy Roman Empire through playing Medieval 2: Total War, for instance :p
 
I've tended to notice in American world history classes the HRE usually only gets a passing mention. If that; I love it when the text book jumps from Charlemagne to the Nazis with very little in between. I think this might be because its somewhat complicated, and because it doesn't much relate to the English speaking world besides as a prelude to World War I.

In general, I've found the medieval period isn't taught very well; usually the class focuses on the dark ages, then the social structure of feudalism, then suddenly the middle age are over and we talk about the discovery of America and the Reformation. The actual politics and history of the middle ages are usually given short shrift.

In fact, World History wasn't even a required class at my high school-only US history.
 
In the Great North State of Minnesota, we had a required ancient world history (which was: stone age junk/migrations, mesopotamia and all those other ancient lands like in west India whatever, China (we spent a lot of time on ancient china), Egypt (lot of time with them too, even had to test us on which drawing depicted which diety), alexander, a little on Rome. nothing on medieval at all. actually, there is no class that taught anything about medieval history at all. that was one trimester (1/3 of the school year, 1 hour a day). oh, and i remember there was some on vikings. and islam. and christianty, oh and buddhism we had to learn about Buddhism stuff. OH forgot, and japan. and taoism.

also required were American history, for two trimesters.

also required was a modern world history class, one trimester. this included french revolution, WWI WWII basically thats it. a little on napoleon. mostly was about French revolution.

I think you only had to take either modern world history or ancient world history, but i took both. but i might be wrong

electives included College American history (two trimesters)

i cant remember any other history classes, but i cant really remember back then

Anyway, nothing on medieval times at all. skips from ancient to modern.

nothing at all really in the book about the HRE but there was some on the Byzantines, but it was not very good at all. it mostly spent the entire time talking about empress zoe "OMG FEMALE OMG" :wacko: nothing really about what the empire actually was
 
and i remember in geography we had to memorize every state in Africa.

I did not ever try, nor did I sing the stupid song they made up for it. I knew the "countries" would change by the time I graduated.
 
In Italy we are quite lucky and we do a lot of stuff.
This year we did:
HRE from Charlemagne to the Bulla Aurea
Viking/Magyar/Saracen attacks in Europe
England from William the Conqueror to Elizabeth I
France from Philip II "Augusto" to the Hundred Years' War
Crusades, mostly the reasons and the theological background
All the most important medieval popes from Gregorio VII to Alessandro VI (aka Rodrigo Borgia)
The discovery and colonization of Central and South America (we talked mostly about the issues the spanish king had to deal after the colonisation and about the consequences in Europe and not too much about the mesoamericans)

I think that's it. We practically did the Middle Ages this year. The ERE was dealt with the Crusades. The only thing I didn't like is that we didn't study the Mongols... But hey, it's been a pretty good history year at school.
 
Gunnarr said:
and i remember in geography we had to memorize every state in Africa.

I did not ever try, nor did I sing the stupid song they made up for it. I knew the "countries" would change by the time I graduated.
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Few changes have been made to the borders, everyday names and list of countries in Africa at least since the 90ies. So you were quite wrong. But if you graduated in the midst of the Cold War I can imagine you were anxious about things (other than geopolitical changes) there radically changing, even though they did not.
 
In all honesty the Holy Roman Empire isn't that important. It was highly decentralized and didn't do that much as an institution. But you probably learned about some of the central powers inside it like Bohemia, Austria, Prussia etc. Those were actual players on the European scene, not the institution as a whole.
 
marat271 said:
In all honesty the Holy Roman Empire isn't that important. It was highly decentralized and didn't do that much as an institution. But you probably learned about some of the central powers inside it like Bohemia, Austria, Prussia etc. Those were actual players on the European scene, not the institution as a whole.
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It may not have been powerful but it was very important, otherwise France/Poland/Hungary would have taken huge chunks out of medieval Germany :p
 
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Mich333 said:
Oh wow?
But how does an history lesson work in the UK?
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Morons turn up to class, take forever to sit down, teacher prattles on telling students canned history version of what happened, often with Hollywood facts, class gets bored and doesn't listen, some bullcrap exercise is done to try and force the children to at least do something. Repeat until end of term.
 
marat271 said:
But you probably learned about some of the central powers inside it like Bohemia, Austria, Prussia etc.
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Unfortunately, we didn't even learn that.
 
Mich333 said:
Oh wow?
But how does an history lesson work in the UK?
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You look at random snippets. So a typical year might contain modules on Native Americans, the Great War, the Soviet Union and the history of crime and punishment. The next year might be Celts, Vikings, Slavery and Empire, and a local history project.
 
The Super Pope said:
You look at random snippets. So a typical year might contain modules on Native Americans, the Great War, the Soviet Union and the history of crime and punishment. The next year might be Celts, Vikings, Slavery and Empire, and a local history project.
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In Italy we do chronological history: 1st year from the first men to the foundation of Rome, 2nd year Rome, 3rd year Middle Ages, 4th year 1600-1800, 5th year from the unification of Italy to the Cold War.
This year we changed professor and we changed a little bit the way we did history in the meaning that we did each medieval state (England, France, HRE, Italian Comuni a bit of ERE) from about 1000 to 1600.
 
Graf Zeppelin said:
French revolution French revolution French revolution French revolution French revolution French revolution French revolution French revolution French revolution French revolution French revolution French revolution French revolution French revolution French revolution French revolution
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A topic that I'd suggest is vastly more relevant to today's world than the Byzantine Empire. I really can't fail any teacher for failing to spend time on the latter
 
ComradeOm said:
A topic that I'd suggest is vastly more relevant to today's world than the Byzantine Empire. I really can't fail any teacher for failing to spend time on the latter
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Absolutely true. It is also an unbelievable complex event with many interesting stories weaved into each other.
Back then I wanted to discuss the battle of Waterloo tho because I have seen the movie and the sheer coolness of the sdkfz 222 because I had the model.
Messerschmidts, Stukas and Spitfires would have done the trick also.
 
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