Improving High School History

[Hirron]

Good evening, Playing paradox's games I've found was a great way to get leads into history. A discussion I had earlier today over history was what should be covered (more) in history class. What do you feel should be included


For the most part I feel 3 big ones that are missing from history (In Canada) are

. The French Revolution: in spite of astounding social changes, in my HS career the french revolution could be described as "violence were happened in France, the king was killed." For an event that brought forward socialism, communism. Changed the power dynamics of europe and lead to the rise of Napoleon it seems disappointing how little is covered

. The American Restoration: Set up the dynamics of modern US north-south divide, saw the US rise as a world power, the impact of laissez-faire economics.

. WW1 Dissolution of the Ottoman empire / National self determination: The dissolution of the Ottomans created most of the modern middle east including ethnic and religious divides. Self determination plays a major role still in separatist conflicts around the globe. I find it somewhat silly that more attention is given to the war itself than the aftermath of the war.

 

[JodelDiplom]

The purpose of High School History education is to make people aware of their country and its place in the world. Making people aware of other countries and their problems is secondary.

Given that Canada's history consists mostly of beaver hunting and tea drinking, and was mostly untouched by the Napoleonic stuff or the US civil war, I find it unsurprising that your curricula contain none of the things you mention...

And frankly, "world history" is such a vast subject, I doubt you would ever get much across in a high school setting, unless it's an elective course with a dedicated teacher and highly motivated students. My memories of high school was that at any given time 80% of the class was sleeping, staring outside the window, or (from 10h grade up) boys trying to impress the hot girls in class by talking smack to the teacher.

 

[KINGBEN]

Good evening, Playing paradox's games I've found was a great way to get leads into history. A discussion I had earlier today over history was what should be covered (more) in history class. What do you feel should be included


For the most part I feel 3 big ones that are missing from history (In Canada) are

. The French Revolution: in spite of astounding social changes, in my HS career the french revolution could be described as "violence were happened in France, the king was killed." For an event that brought forward socialism, communism. Changed the power dynamics of europe and lead to the rise of Napoleon it seems disappointing how little is covered

. The American Restoration: Set up the dynamics of modern US north-south divide, saw the US rise as a world power, the impact of laissez-faire economics.

. WW1 Dissolution of the Ottoman empire / National self determination: The dissolution of the Ottomans created most of the modern middle east including ethnic and religious divides. Self determination plays a major role still in separatist conflicts around the globe. I find it somewhat silly that more attention is given to the war itself than the aftermath of the war.

What would you take out to find space for this? That is just as important a question.

 

[Lord Finnish]

I definitely support the idea of giving more room to Ottoman downfall. Middle east's issues are very important in this day and age and people should know what caused them.


Sack of Baghdad could also be mentioned as a more long-term affliction to Islam.

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

For the most part I feel 3 big ones that are missing from history (In Canada) are

. The French Revolution: in spite of astounding social changes, in my HS career the french revolution could be described as "violence were happened in France, the king was killed." For an event that brought forward socialism, communism. Changed the power dynamics of europe and lead to the rise of Napoleon it seems disappointing how little is covered

. The American Restoration: Set up the dynamics of modern US north-south divide, saw the US rise as a world power, the impact of laissez-faire economics.

. WW1 Dissolution of the Ottoman empire / National self determination: The dissolution of the Ottomans created most of the modern middle east including ethnic and religious divides. Self determination plays a major role still in separatist conflicts around the globe. I find it somewhat silly that more attention is given to the war itself than the aftermath of the war.

They're missing? I'm rather surprised. I thought these were covered pretty widely in high school curricula across the world. Is there some peculiar curriculum your school was following or is that standard in Canada?

 

[BaronNoir]

Well, the OP raises good points and I presume he is Canadian (like me)

I would say here that the big problem is the time in class, that force teachers to go to the bare bone.

 

[Calad]

Mentioning that Islam was actually regarded more progressive religion in Europe before 20th century and it really was more progressive before Mongols sacked Bagdad. Saladin should also be mentioned.

So why Islam so much? Because ISIS and other nuts almost 200 million people are regarded as savages!

 

[BaronNoir]

Calad, this would be extremely useful.

However, ATM, teachers don't have the time to talk about the Confederation of 1867....

 

[Yakman]

High School history should be primarily about your own country and culture.

A year given to world events and a year to current ones might be helpful, but the focus shouldn't be on why some foreigners murdered each other 200 years ago, it should be on how this country came to be, why what is here is here, and why what's happening today in my country is happening today.

Honestly, who really cares about Thermidorians and Jacobins?

 

[Yakman]

Because ISIS and other nuts almost 200 million people are regarded as savages!

IS is run by savages. They are cutting people's heads off and doing other awful things.

 

[BaronNoir]

High School history should be primarily about your own country and culture.

A year given to world events and a year to current ones might be helpful, but the focus shouldn't be on why some foreigners murdered each other 200 years ago, it should be on how this country came to be, why what is here is here, and why what's happening today in my country is happening today.

Honestly, who really cares about Thermidorians and Jacobins?

French should put it in their history, obviously. Issue is , they too don't have time. Henry IV to Louis XVI is usually done in one seance.

(''They'' is obviously a misnommer. There are still teachers, everywhere in the world, that manage to teach well their students about history)

 

[Yakman]

yeah, because WHO CARES?

Here's French History from that time: "France was a Catholic country that fought a lot of wars with its neighbors and against its own religious minorities. During this time France became the richest country in Europe and the center of its art, culture, and trade."

boom. done.

 

[BaronNoir]

By ''they don't have time'' I mean that the school curriculum don't leave enough hours for teaching the material.

 

[joak]

. The American Restoration: Set up the dynamics of modern US north-south divide, saw the US rise as a world power, the impact of laissez-faire economics.

You mean reconstruction. Were you subtly trying to demonstrate your point that it's not well covered?

Anyway, I will note that the things you mentioned are fiendishly complicated and don't have a good narrative. (And in so saying I'm assuming you mean post-civil war period in US, not just reconstruction.)

The French Revolution and rise of self-determination requires either intense diving into underlying factors, causes, disputed theories, and how personal actors shaped and were shaped by societal forces, or memorizing a very tedious list of factions and players and incidents that don't fit well together.

Similarly, post-Civil War US is I think one of the most important eras in our nation's history but it's you really need to dive into a bunch of events that are symptoms of underlying changes and so don't 'do' anything and don't even get resolved on their own terms so much as transformed into something else in the 20th century. I completely understand the high school approach of "We closed the frontier, finished off the Indians, and industrialized for a generation. To understand this, look at our kick-ass performance in the Spanish American War!"

 

[Yakman]

By ''they don't have time'' I mean that the school curriculum don't leave enough hours for teaching the material.

no, they have time. they just don't consider it a priority, so it gets left out.

 

[J. Passepartout]

Looking back at my high school history education*, I think that one thing which might have been emphasized more than it was would be the depth of various economic depressions and recessions prior to the Great Depression. The Great Depression was an important event in the 20th century and definitely deserves attention, but I think a lot of the earlier political and other events which were covered would have made better sense to more of my fellow students, and provided a better context for why people at the time or shortly afterward did what they did, if the economic activity of the time was discussed. The examples that came to my mind when I first thought of this were the context in which people like William Jennings Bryan came to prominence and the economic activity which lead to the Federal Reserve in the USA. Bryan and the Fed were definitely mentioned, and some aspects of the economic activity which caused them were mentioned, but there was not enough of a link made, or not enough description given for students to notice the connection, in my opinion.

*My high school education was at a rural location in midwestern New York state. Teachers at other schools may have had mildly different focuses but I suspect that things would be similar at most other schools throughout the state, partly due to standards given to the local schools by the state government, and partly due to classroom time restraints.

tl:dr more economics should be included.

 

[SDSkinner]

Mentioning that Islam was actually regarded more progressive religion in Europe before 20th century and it really was more progressive before Mongols sacked Bagdad. Saladin should also be mentioned.

So why Islam so much? Because ISIS and other nuts almost 200 million people are regarded as savages!

That depends on the time period, individual Muslim and non-Muslim rulers (where the heck would you put Akbar the Great?) and what you were measuring. Trying to measure "progressiveness" gets you into trying to explain how things worked in the middle ages which is complex, fascinating and more than a year subject.