I think the physical genocide of our Indigenous people has long been well-chronicled: the Americans did it with guns, the British/Canadians with germs. However the treatment of the Indigenous survivors via the residential school system was not really recognized as evil until 50 years or so ago.
An analogy with slavery may be that, although slavery was seen as evil and abolished 150+ years ago, the subsequent system continued to harm the descendants of the slaves. Only in the past 50+ years have those subsequent injustices begun to be addressed meaningfully.
I agree with your analogy. And itâs not that itâs not chronicled. Itâs just not the focus of a high school history course because slavery dominates that period.
Even before conservative politicians started invoking âcritical race theoryâ in their fundraising and campaign ads, they and their appointees had been working to limit what they perceived as âattempts to make white people feel bad about themselvesâ in approvals of textbooks and curricula.
It seems like to a large extent itâs like⌠we spend SO much time on the Civil War that when itâs over⌠the teacher realizes âcrap, I only have 8 weeks left to cover the last 150+ years!!!â (Fewer when I was in school.)
It was like that for me. We pretty much just skipped reconstruction, learned a little bit about the gilded age = Harding bad, and then WW1 and WW2. Everything after that it was like uhhh you guys have enough to pass the AP test good luck with the Cold War stuff we didnât cover.
I am concerned by restrictions that politicians may place on what is taught in schools. I have always believed our only hope for an informed electorate is a good education system, one that does not shy away from the intelligent discussion of controversial topics. Talking to my teenage grandchildren, I appreciate that they do not have fragile minds that need to be protected from difficult discussions. They have an insatiable hunger for knowledge which I hope their teachers will feed with facts and discussions on controversial topics.
One course that my older grandchildren have taken is how to assess the veracity of various sources. They learned to double check the âfactsâ being put forward, look for possible biases because of who the author/site is and learn to have a healthy distrust of conspiracies that appear to have an agenda. It is a great course to encourage critical thinking. I would hope such a course would be part of all high school curricula given the amount of misinformation on social media.
I think public school American history classes have a common failing â a lot of time spent on the colonial/revolutionary era, quite a bit of time spent on slavery and the Civil WarâŚand then thereâs not much time for anything else.
I lucked out in high school. My AP US History teacher, my AP American Lit teacher, and to a certain extent my AP Music Theory teacher coordinated syllabi, plus the topics for academic decathlon that year were US-centric the year I had those three classes. It was probably my favorite year of my formal education because of the resulting integration.
It was still a little bit light, content-wise, in between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, and again between the Civil War and the 1920âsâŚbut that was compensated a little bit with the summer reading we were assigned heading into the year.
Folks, itâs OK. Weâve taken care of the Native Americans by giving them casino licenses so they can make some money. Thatâs more than enough, seeing as how after taking their land and pushing them into reservations and giving them meager food and cash and inducing them to splurge the money on booze, they really didnât have the means to take care of themselves.
One of the schools I subbed at had actually split American History into two separate year-long courses. I think the Civil War was in the first half and Reconstruction was in the second half, but I wouldnât swear to that. I always thought that was a better way to do it. Yeah, they probably get less World History but I think thatâs probably a fair trade.
Iâve heard it said that mathematics education is a mile wide and an inch deep, but thatâs probably true of history to an even greater extent. Iâll trade some breadth for some depth.
How much âWorld Historyâ is taught in US high schools?
In Canada, Canadian history was only taught in one year when I was in high school and it was approached no differently than European or Asian history.
My high school US history studies undoubtedly covered less material than what US students were taught. Our studies were pretty dispassionate about every countryâs history including our own.
I definitely learned some ancient history in school and through various social studies classes.
I remember being pretty bummed I never learned about the world wars (weâd always run out of time by the time we got there) and honestly it felt like I re-learned US history from ~1750-1900 over and over.
Right, and then that repeats each year you have US history. WWI and WWII are given about a week each, and then the last chapter you cover is the civil rights movement.
The 20th century was really important in American history but I seem to be hearing in this thread that it is not discussed much in high school? It would be interesting to examine the labour movement, civil rights, corporate influence, rise of American power, etc., and trace their development over the century? Probably these themes are covered extensively in university courses but some focus on these topics in high school would catch more students. Also theme-based studies might be more interesting than just learning dates of battles, etc.
I think what weâll find is that most HS teachers spend time on those topics which theyâre either very familiar with or enjoy most (if not both) and avoid areas that they either donât like or donât understand all that well (likely both).
What I recall of my Social Studies / history coursework.
5th grade: US History
6th grade: Ancient Civilizations
7th grade: Geography (global, starting with US but moving on very quickly)
Also a semester on Ohio History
8th grade: European History???
9th grade: semester on Civics / Citizenship
10th grade: World History
11th grade: AP US History
12th grade: at least one semester-long elective
I have little recollection of what Social Studies focused on for K-4. And I only dimly recall my 8th grade class. I remember the teacher, but not what he taught.
This is my recollection, though itâs also been years since I did high school [not counting last nightâs dream / nightmare]. I think we might have actually gone in decent depth through the Civil War, but then glossed over it aside from hitting the causes of the civil war and a few major battles. I can remember we touched on Reconstruction, but then breezed past it like the South did after Hayes was elected and pulled all the troops out. I remember we spent time on the Spanish-American War and then got into WWI, then hit the Depression, then said âyeah, then there was WWIIâ and that was the end of the school year.
Think I might have mentioned it before, but our âdeep diveâ was creating a government and figuring out how to deal with crises that arise as a nation is born. It was supposed to be fun and informative. It was an utter disaster, and 75% of the class was fine with it. Looking back, it was a warning sign of things to come.
This is my thought as well. The US isnât that meaningful a country on the world stage until the late 19th through 20th centuries but that was definitely the least covered in my history lessons.