History class 'round the world!!!!
POSTED BY: SaintAndeol
UPDATED: Thursday, April 20, 2006 22:16
VIEWED: 3019
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I'm curious about how each country approaches teaching history to it's young students, at the elementry level. America has it pretty easy, being such a young country. We start learning about the Revolutionary War and in a scant few centuries we're at the present.
But what about the countries that have been around a lot longer? When you teach begin to teach history to your youngest students, what do you focus on first? How soon do English and French children learn about the Hundred Year's War? How unbiased do the histories seem to be, now that you look back on them. Y'know, stuff like that. I'm just interested in how other countries work, and I like direct sources. 
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We are American, my boys went to school in the UK, then the USA, then the UK, then the USA. They knew MORE about UK history from learning in the US than they did in the UK.
Maybe they have too much history to teach :)
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Im English and i hated History so the only thing i learnt was the history of what time the lesson started and finished. But all we really learn about from what i can remember is the second world war.
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i do history and i live in england!
well when in junior school you learn about ancient egyptians and tudors and stuff then in secondary school (after youre 11) you generally do in the younger years the industrial revolution (which is REALLY fun...) the spanish armada, the build up to the first and second world wars and then 'life in the trenches' in the world wars.
then at GCSE (ages 15-16) you do hitler and lenin/stalin russia. at AS level (16-17) im doing the industrial/agriculural revolution, how hitler got in power and lenin's/stalin's russia but i think most people do the politics of tudor england instead of industrial revolution.
there is a lot of world war stuff and i dont think we do anything about american history... im not sure how biased we are on the german world war but a lot of it is just about what was happening in their country so... *shrug*
hope this makes sense!
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In Italy they start from the iron age on. And I ain't kidding.
From pre-history to WW2 passing thru the egiptians, the punic wars, the roman empire, the middle ages, renaissance, industrial revolution, ww1 and ww2... and all the rest in between I can't remember right now.
The most sadists of teachers want the dates too.
I think if you'd make a survey on the most hated subject between italian pupils , 98% would say history.
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I went to school in 3 countries, most of the time in the US.
We learned from ancient Greece and Rome right up to present day. We spent a lot of time on European history - esp the British colony.
But I lived in Fairfax county VA and it was about 100 years ago.
One day.
One mission.
One army of Browncoats.
On June 23rd, we aim to misbehave!
Nathan doesn't know it yet, but I am his one true love! Is that weird?
(he will believe, he will believe)
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My (Public Catholic High) School in Canada had a range of history courses:
World History started with the Mesopotamians and then jumped via the "proper" historical intervals (Mesopotamia => Babylon => Egypt => Ancient Greece => Rome) into the British Empire, Confederation, and then the Canadian perspective of WWI, WWII, and modern international politics (as in 90% Canadian policy, 10% what everyone else was doing). I may be biased though, since we had one of the worst teachers I have ever encountered. She was like an academic Hitler, writing notes on the board after the bell had rung, making us all late for next period, expecting us to have independently covered everything she didn't, arbitrarily re-marking tests [telling us it's worth 20%, then grading it for 50%], knocking down academic marks for behavioural issues, glossing over anything interesting with a flood of statistics and rote "facts").
Canadian History started with the colonies, then led up to Confederation, then turned into Canadian Politics (of the "this is why we're right" method).
It wasn't until I got the hell out of there that I started to realize just how interesting history could be. As with most things, I learned more on my own than was ever covered (or even acknowledged) in school ("lost" prehistory hinted at by shared myths [the Flood, a lost civilization of pyramid-builders, a marginalized globe-spanning mystery cult, out-of-place artifacts], Victorian materialist bias, historical context of the Egyptian Dynasties, the founding of Rome, the conquests of the British Isles, cultural cross-pollinization, comparison with "non-western" history [the far and middle Easts, the Americas], repurcussions of geo-social upheavals manifesting as political/religious doctrine).
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I attended lower grade schools in France (4th and 5th grade), the Western US (6th through 10th), and the South (11th through Grad school). In France (American School of Paris), we were taught everything you ever wanted to know about history; I am not kidding. The education level there was such that it wasn't until about 7th grade back in the States that I started learning about something I had not been taught in France. I am not saying I was such a good student that I knew it all, but always had a sense of "I have heard this before" back in the States.
The Western schools (all in Arizona) were alright. The teaching of history was a bit more diffused; more along the lines of Survey courses. It wasn't until high school that they became focused/specialized.
I am sort of a cheater in this...as I loved history so much that I ended up getting a Master of Arts degree in it, focusing on medieval Europe.
I know this was from an American, but at least it has some insight into European teaching...
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I'm Irish and we start learning history in primary school when we're about 9 years old. But the first things we learn are very, very basic. I don't know how it is now, but I remember my first history lessons were actually all based on mythology - mostly Irish legends, but there were also stories like the wooden horse of Troy and others from around the world.
It may seem a bit silly to teach it as history, but it really worked for me as it gave me an idea of different cultures from around the world, as well as a good grounding in my own country's mythology. We mostly studied ancient to medieval history until our second year in secondary school (I was about 14 years old) then we covered some modern Irish, UK and European history as well as the history of one African country (There was a choice and our teacher chose Kenya.) That syllabus for the Leaving Certificate was much more detailed, but also much more limited. It covered Irish and European history from 1750 to 1950, a period I had no interest in whatsoever. I didn't find out that it was the only period covered until after I'd chosen it as a leaving cert subject. Not a good choice!
It turns out that there's a whole other syllabus that covers medieval and Elizabethan history for Ireland and Europe, but very few schools teach it. I found that out two days before I did my Leaving Cert History exam and I'm still mad about it! I would have studied it by myself! I ~love~ that period of history! Heck, I ~still~ read history books about Tudor England!!!
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