Lol, 1990 wasn’t history when i was in HS, so Dr Littlejohn gets a pass on that one. We covered thru Carter’s election, and talked a little about events after that. Did a bit about civil rights/great society and how things were swinging back a bit economically under Reagan.
Yeah of course. We also had 1 religion class per semester. Old Testament, New Testament, World Religions/Make Fun of Other Religions, etc. Mostly boiled down to memorizing and writing Bible verses like a long spelling test, or writing takedown papers of religions, especially Mormons for some reason.
Other schools even if parochial may have less chapel or not require religion classes.
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Clearly not controlled by Jews, but my impression is that some lived there even after Islam gained control. Numbers started to increase with the rise of Zionism in the late 19th century, right?
The folks on this forum probably learned more history after finishing school than they did during school? I just wish everyone was as curious about how the world works.
I know I have learned more history since graduating but then again I finished high school in 1968 so I have had lots of time to do so!
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I remember a co-op telling me about how they learned about 9/11 in history class.
I don’t think I’ll ever recover from being made to feel that old.
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I think that may have something to do with the way US Universities structure their degrees.
You have to take a lot more electives in the US to meet graduation requirements vs UK/Canada.
History, Anthropology, Sociology, American History etc.
All can be “choices” which can kind of point you down interesting paths for learning (they did for me).
Jews started moving back in a veeeery slow trickle starting in the 13th century. It picked up a bit the late18th century and really took off with the rise of Zionism in the early 20th century.
Jews had often had a hard time migrating to Israel until Israel became a State. It wasn’t impossible but it wasn’t easy. For example, the British Mandate had restrictions on Jewish migration. I believe there were restrictions during the Ottoman Empire as well. The Ottoman Empire did allow Sephardic Jewry to enter after the Spanish inquisition.
The push of Zionism, the aftermath of the Holocaust, and allowed migration really enabled Jews to return to Israel after 1948.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4282539
Statistics by Year for Migration since 1948:
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I remember staring out of my high school building in NYC seeing the smoke. And few friends freaking out because their parents worked in the World Trade Center (thankfully they were okay).
Talking to my kids about it… it feels comparable to when I had an assignment to ask my parents about the JFK assassination.
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Kudos to the US universities in that regard. A difference in high school history between the US and Canada may be that I was taught much more “World History” than Canadian history. I expect US high schools focus primarily on US history rather than other countries’ history because of the relative importance of the US?
I was quite active politically during my high school and university years so I still learned much history and politics then but it was largely outside of the classroom. I wish however I could have worked in some history classes in university.
When I was in high school, the state requirement was that everyone take a year of Western history, and a year of US history. There was also an option to take AP European history, which had about 1/6th of the enrollment of AP US history at my school, partly because it was option, partly because the teacher had a reputation of being tough (she was excellent, not unfairly hard). And there was also an option to take a year of non-western history, which I did not do. So I graduated knowing essentially nothing about sub-Saharan African history or Asian history. I took courses on Indian and Japanese history in college, which still leaves massive knowledge gaps.
I went to do some reading on first Nations history wrt to Canada a couple years ago. I figured the best books would be those written ‘at the time’. My gawd, even I could tell they were racist books lol. Modern writing on the subject imo is heavily tainted as well, hard to get unbiased readings ion that subject.
Honestly the most factual info is the truth and reconciliation reports. But I got about a quarter of the way through and nope. It’s pretty heavy reading. Biggest takeaway from what I did read is that the media is full of crap on the subject.
If you want legit reading recommendations go to Ask Historians Subreddit and ask them.
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wiki is your friend. No need to stay actively ignorant.
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In my high school AP History class, one of the principles was that if it happened less than 30 years ago, it’s too recent to study objectively.
That got us up to Ike and the early part of the Cold War, although everything after we nuked Japan was a bit rushed.
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I can see that.
In addition, as bad as I thought Nixon was in real time, he turned out to be even worse when additional revelations came out many years later.
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I bet that the Avro Arrow was not mentioned when discussing Ike’s term in office so I will mention it here.
In the 1950’s, the Canadian aerospace industry was developing the Avro Arrow. It was far superior to any US military jet. The US aerospace industry was concerned and persuaded Ike to have a chat with our PM about discontinuing its support for the Arrow. The Arrow program was quickly shut down followed by most of the Canadian military aerospace industry.
Probably academic as one of the big US aerospace companies would have acquired Avro if Arrow sales had been successful. Although there is a bit of an aerospace industry left in Canada it is primarily some branches of the big US companies. All our fighter jets are now bought from US companies. The movie about the Avro Arrow was quite entertaining (starred Dan Ackroyd 
).
Further updates on the arrow. Barry’s Bay, Ontario is the home of one of the test pilots. Fallout ('member him? where’d he go?) was from there. Anyway, in the town center there’s a big statue of the pilot and the plane. here you go, Barry’s bay ontario, where I vacation every year:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Barry’s+Bay,+ON/@45.4884337,-77.6783707,34a,54.2y/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sAF1QipORAVe8Sw8Aw5-4yQtqdZV75RsoliGsLUzDECMh!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipORAVe8Sw8Aw5-4yQtqdZV75RsoliGsLUzDECMh%3Dw86-h114-k-no!7i3024!8i4032!4m7!3m6!1s0x4cd41ced881d52d7:0xcaca519ae470ba18!8m2!3d45.4884337!4d-77.6783707!10e5!16zL20vMGNycDdx?entry=ttu
There’s an urban myth that that they fired test planes into lake ontario and apparently people hope to find one someday. I don’t think they’ve ever found one though, could be wrong.
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That falls into the “after 1945” category, so no. I’m not sure the name “Kissinger” ever came up unless you happened to read ahead in the textbook.
I had:
US History in 5th, 8th and 11th grades
Civics (semester only) in 9th grade
American Literature in 10th grade
Ancient Civilizations in 6th grade
World History in 4th & 10th grades
British Literature in 11th grade
Geography in 7th grade (both US and worldwide)
Social Studies semester-long elective in 12th grade (minimum of 1 elective, but you could take more if you wanted)
Other English classes included literature from US & Britain & others as well.
But the 8th grade version of US history included quite a bit of other stuff if it was related to the US. Like some history of the Kingdom of Hawaii, or the French resistance in WWII or the concentration camps during the Holocaust. So it was a pretty loose “US” history.
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