S/O: Middle and High School History Progression

[Junie]

So @Pam in CT 's Thread about the Tulsa Race Massacre got me thinking about my middle and high school's history progression.  I feel like much of American History was sorely neglected.  I'm wondering if my experience was common.

I went to a public school in Pennsylvania.  Our history courses were:

7th -- Ancient Civilizations

8th -- Geography

9th -- American History

10th -- World History (I think.  I mostly remember talking about the Berlin Wall.)

11th -- Economics and Government

12th -- World Cultures (with a focus on world religions)

 

So what were your history courses?

Edited June 1, 2021 by Junie

[theelfqueen]

How can you remember that stuff???? I took a government class in high school and an American History... and a Psych class... when or in what order? No idea? I assume there was also a World History or Western Civ. 

And my degree is in history and I taught hs ss...  so uhh I guess I liked them? 

[Danae]

7th. American History

8th Geography maybe?  I seem to have blanked out 8th grade.

9th American Government

10th Minnesota History

11th European History

12th Social Studies Electives

[theelfqueen]

Wait a minute! I do remember something about World History class - we had a final project to do - teacher told us to be like Bill and Ted's final presentation. I dont remember at all what I did ... but I do remember my friend Chandra did a project on Joan of Arc. It was a video that ended with a barbie being burned ar the stake. 

[Pam in CT]

I went to public high school in northern CT.  9th grade was "African studies," a weird mashup of ancient Egypt fastforwarding directly to colonial Sub-Sahara, ending with a teeny bit of then-contemporary South Africa.  10th was an effort at an "integrated" curriculum across literature and history, focusing on Greek and Roman.  11th was European and 12th was American.  (We didn't have enough kids to sustain proper AP classes, so the school combined the better students of 11th and 12th grade, and rotated between Europe and US, and sort of vaguely lobbed the 2-4 kids who were interested in the test on a catch-as-catch-can basis.)  As I recall, US history ended around the Civil Warr and we RACED through the end of European to get to WWII.

[Melissa Louise]

The trouble with history curricula is that there's so. much. content. 

Every time you add, you gotta take away somewhere else. 

And it's all important! 

Not US but the h/s curriculum here integrates national history with world history. First years of h/s focus on ancient history + history skills, senior years focus on modern history + history skills. There are options in the curriculum to focus on Asian history, Indigenous history, and 'theme' history (civil rights movements, environmental movements)...but also a strong, politically funded focus on World Wars. 

I sometimes teach h/s history but only 20th C history at that level. 

You could spend 6 years total just on 1900-1949. But I cover:

Federation  (national history) + overview of status of Indigenous peoples domestically incl massacres. 

China before 1930 - briefly 

Russian revolution(s)

WW1 - causes, various fronts relevant to us here, outcomes and consequences. Usually incorporate Modernist writers around here. 

Post war culture/Great Depression w a national focus

Germany between the wars.

WW2 with a focus on Jewish resistance, Holocaust studies, atomic bomb (usually incorporate a Japanese literature and film study here)

Second year:

Cold War (incorporates a unit of literature 'After the Bomb')

Partition 

Korea/Vietnam (focus on national experience)

Civil rights movement (national focus)

Have never taught past 1970. 

As you can see, much of the history of the 20th C world is missing! 

I think that's why we teach skills, not just content. So students through their lives can bring those skills to an exploration of history(ies).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Melissa Louise]

Ha, we do zero state history. Like, it's just not a thing. Anything I know about my state I either learned in primary school or read in a magazine somewhere. 

[Terabith]

Public school in Jackson, TN and then public school in Mitchell, SD.  

7th:  a semester of Tennessee History/ a semester of World Geography, but 75% of both was African American history

8th:  US history from an African American perspective

9th:  Civics

10th:  no social studies (only six periods in the day)

11th:  US history (in South Dakota), also a semester of World Geography

12th grade:  dual enrollment of World History 1 and 2 at local liberal arts college, a semester of Critical Issues looking at controversial topics

[Melissa Louise]

1 minute ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

I think most American states require that state history be taught. DD learned about it in elementary school and things like the state bird and state flower. Do they have state birds in Australia? 

I will say this as a native Oklahoman, at least it was never hard to learn our state song. We all knew it because we sang it in school all of the time. Of course most states don't have a state song written by Rodgers and Hammerstein. 

I've got no idea. I learned that back in primary school, which was long ago! Pretty sure we don't have a song. 

Ha! re Oklahoma!

[athena1277]

I got plenty of American history in school, but the thing that I am amazed by when thinking back is that I never had to take a world history course in either high school or college.  I did take world geography in high school, but there wasn’t much history involved.  Needless to say, I learned a lot from reading SOTW with my kids.

[kirstenhill]

I moved school districts between 8th and 9th, which ending up leading to a duplication for me:

(6th grade: State history)

7th grade: Geography

8th grade: US History from 1860 to "present" (which really meant through the 1960s, with a really brief spin through the 70s - this was in about 1991)

9th grade: Civics (government + current events)

10th grade: "Roots of Western Civilization" (basically, an ancient history class)

11th grade: US History, again from 1860 to "present" aka the 1960s

12th grade: electives -- I chose Psychology and Sociology

 

[Shoeless]

How the heck do y'all remember this?! 

I graduated in 1990 in NY.  I had US history and "World history" that was really European history. Some sort of civics/government/economics class in 12th grade. 

10th grade was the "World history" class.

11th was US history.

12th was civics/govt. 

I feel like the school just endlessly repeated US and "world" history from 8th through 12th. We had NY state history in elementary school, using some really old books from the 1950s that sung the praises of Robert Moses and his amazing parkways and beaches. 

 

Edited June 1, 2021 by MissLemon

[Melissa Louise]

6 minutes ago, athena1277 said:

I got plenty of American history in school, but the thing that I am amazed by when thinking back is that I never had to take a world history course in either high school or college.  I did take world geography in high school, but there wasn’t much history involved.  Needless to say, I learned a lot from reading SOTW with my kids.

That's wild!

[Loowit]

From what I can remember:

7th grade: Social Studies - can't remember what it covered, but the teacher used to throw chalk at kids who fell asleep in class

8th grade: American History - we watched a lot of movies and mini-series

9th grade: World History - we had a field trip to Seattle to see the terracotta warrior exhibit; we also had to take a semester of state history. I found it amusing that we took a field trip out of state for that one.  We went to see Fort Clatsop in Oregon, and we were from Washington.

10th grade: US History - the teacher was a coach and in the spring we spent a lot of time out on the track setting up for meets; we also watched a lot of movies and did a lot of worksheets like word searches and cross-word puzzles.

11th grade: half year of government (elective)

12th grade: CWP (Contemporary World Problems)

[Melissa Louise]

Just now, MissLemon said:

How the heck do y'all remember this?! 

I graduated in 1990. I don't 

I only remember b/c I have reason to stare at the curriculum. 

What I actually remember? 

1. Ancient history is so boring 

2. Ooh, Medieval Feast Day!

3. King Arthur?

4. Mum going up to school because I'm weeping all night about boys being sent to the Western Front and she wants to know if I should quit Modern History before we get to WW2. 

5. A joke made while watching a movie about the atomic bomb. 

 

[Carrie12345]

I don’t remember middle school.

For me, 9th was Global Awareness (became mostly aware of maps), 10th US I, 11th US II, 12th electives optional. 
I did a half year of Vietnam War somewhere in there as an elective. 

[Farrar]

I think it's more common to do state history in elementary and middle school. There are definitely states that require it in high school, but I think there are maybe more that don't? Or many that don't? It's definitely a 4th grade thing. Fourth graders do American history, get free National Park passes, and often also do state history. High schoolers... sometimes?

In NC, it was...

9th ELP (Economic, Legal, and Political systems)
10th World
11th US
12th elective - I took AP Euro

I took most of my sequence through an integrated English and history block scheduled approach that was based on classical education and involved a lot of seminars.

[lulalu]

This is what I think I had, but it was many moons ago and well I could be wrong. 

6th- World Geography

7th- social science mix- a few weeks on each of the major ones (I think I could be so off on that)

8th- American History, I remember this class well and loved it. 

9th- Government

10th- world history 

11th- economics 

12th- US history again 

I could be slightly wrong on the order those were in 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 1, 2021 by lulalu

[Danae]

47 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

I think most American states require that state history be taught. DD learned about it in elementary school and things like the state bird and state flower. Do they have state birds in Australia? 

I will say this as a native Oklahoman, at least it was never hard to learn our state song. We all knew it because we sang it in school all of the time. Of course most states don't have a state song written by Rodgers and Hammerstein. 

I don’t think we even have a state song.  Our state fair song is better than the one Rogers and Hammerstein wrote, though.

[Katy]

7th- World Geography

8th- American History, complete with Spring Break trip to DC.

9th- One term civics, one term economics.

10th- Western Civ (history, not literature)

11th- American History 

12th - ? I skipped this year, but I think it may have been electives, like psychology, sociology, human growth & development, optional college credit.

[JennyD]

I always boggle at people who can reel off the classes they took in high school.  Anything before last Tuesday is a blur, honestly.

I do recall taking a European history class in 9th grade.  It was taught by one Mr. Pericles Gianiakis (R.I.P) and a staggering portion of the course was devoted to the glory that was Greece. 

I'm pretty sure I also took AP US history at some point.  And in 8th grade I did a social studies project about Japan that was genuinely life-changing.  Other that that?  No idea.

 

 

 

[EKS]

This was in the early 80s in private schools in Los Angeles.

7th grade: Ancient history

8th grade: European history

9th grade: No history or social studies

10th grade (changed schools): World history and art history (separate classes)

11th grade: American history

12th grade: Government

[Random]

I have no idea regarding any of my high school or middle school history, except these two small tidbits:

1) The hs 'social studies' teacher was the football coach and he spent the entire class period talking about whatever pro sport was in season and giving his picks for who would win that day's game.  Small school = 1 hs ss teacher.  True story.  He was a great football coach, so not much else mattered.

2) I must've studied the middle ages in middle school because I did a project where I built a medieval castle.  I brought it in to class the day it was due and my teacher said, "We'll call it, The War is Over." True story.  I am still awful with crafts and things like crafts.

I have learned SO MUCH while homeschooling.

[Kareni]

I have a memory like a sieve and the added complication that I attended five different schools between ninth and twelfth grades. I'd have to dig up old report cards to get more information, but I do recall eleventh and twelfth grades.

11th grade ~ I'd just moved to Jamaica and was happy to have the opportunity to avoid taking American history. (The private school I attended did offer it as there were numerous Americans attending.) I took History of the West Indies instead.

12th grade ~ I was back in the US and made to take that American History class I thought I could avoid. I also took AP European History.

Regards,

Kareni

[bookbard]

Australia:

Year 7 - Ancient History - I remember doing the Sumerians. It can't have taken up the whole year though. 

Year 8 - Medieval and so on - I just remember doing Vikings but we must have covered other things, surely.

Year 9 - Australian history - vaguely remember the gold rush. There was one paragraph about women, I remember thinking one day I was going to write a textbook which was all about women and had maybe one paragraph about men. Don't recall doing any Indigenous history at all. 

Year 10 - Australian history - can't remember specifically. We definitely studied world war 1 and Gallipoli though. 

Year 11 & 12 - Elective Ancient and Modern. Did Greece & Rome for Ancient (Persian wars, Augustan period), and for Modern we did a bit about Russia (I remember the poor Kulaks), a bit about US/Soviet Relations (good timing for the end of the cold war), oh and we did Germany, the Weimar republic, maybe the whole war? I think the textbook was 20th century Germany, but not sure how much we had to cover.

We also did some history during geography - we did a whole unit on people power which was again good timing as that was during Tiananmen Square. I have a scrapbook somewhere of paper clippings from that time. That was year 9 or 10. 

 

I came out of school having no idea about US history except they had slaves and a vague idea of a civil war but ? Also had no idea about the English civil war. No idea about all the wars across Australia between Europeans and Indigenous people. No idea that the Aboriginal people in the north had ongoing good trading relationship with the Islamic Macassans. No idea about all the amazing Kingdoms within the African continent. 

Just remembered they made us watch Mississipi Burning - that was in English, maybe? Definitely opened our eyes.

 

Edited June 2, 2021 by bookbard
spelling

[elegantlion]

2 hours ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

 

It genuinely kills me a little bit inside when I hear someone say that history is boring. How could history be boring? It's the story of humanity. How can people not want to know what happened in the past? 

 

You've made the historian in me smile. 🤩

 

As for what I took in middle and high school, not a clue on names. 

 

I do know I took either a western civ course or an ancient then medieval course. I remember talking about chariot races and I did a report on knights - which I still have. This history professor was awesome, he previously had an ax that he brought to school and used on his desk. By the time I got there, he wasn't bringing in the ax, but the desk had scars. 

I remember one US history course, but not specifics. 

I must have taken a European history course in junior high as I wrote a report on the Holocaust - still have that one too. 

[prairiewindmomma]

I went to a small rural high school. It had limited catalog offerings for classes. My graduating class had fully 1/3 of the females either drop out or pregnant by graduation. Education was not valued. I was considered uppity as the only female in my physics class, class size of 12. I cannot emphasize enough what a barren wasteland it was for academically minded people.

God bless the man who held the new position of vice-principal; I was friends with his kid. He let me take whatever I wanted as long as I could find a textbook for it and find a teacher who would grade me. We wrote it into my IEP. I took AP US History, Euro history, economics and several other classes not offered in the catalog. I was the only student for all of those, including Spanish 4. 
 

Had I followed the usual course I would have had one year of us history and one semester civics, one semester us government.

[purpleowl]

Let's see what I can recall. Both schools were small private schools; we moved away and then moved back.

7th grade, school A: World Geography.

8th grade, school B: um. I know the school year was split into three quarters (and that bothered me), and one quarter was Georgia history. I don't remember what the other two quarters were. One of them might have been civics...not sure.

9th grade, school B: I remember that my teacher sounded like the guy on Animaniacs who said "it's time for another good idea/bad idea," and we always tried to get him to say that line. I have no clue what history we studied though. 😂

10th grade, school A: Government first semester, Economics second semester.

11th grade, school A: US History

12th grade, school A: European History

[Momto6inIN]

I vaguely remember some kind of geography with a really cute young new teacher fresh out of college who was also the assistant wrestling coach in 7th grade and the reason I remember he was the assistant was because my dad was the head wrestling coach 😉  In 9th we all did US History and the basketball coach was the teacher and we did boring worksheets every day. I have no recollection whatsoever of anything else until 12th grade when I took "Advanced History" (we didn't have AP courses) and I had to write a research paper and I chose to do a psychoanalysis of Hitler. I think it was mostly European history. Oh, and I took "American Problems" (I assume it was supposed to be sociology?) as an elective in 12th grade and we never did anything in that class whatsoever that I recall. The teacher weighed about 800 pounds and never got up from his desk and we all just talked the whole period. I do not remember learning much of anything about anything other than US history during any of my K-11 years, just that 1 year of Advanced History in 12th.

I am definitrely also one of those who learned a lot from SotW!

[Carrie12345]

4 hours ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

It genuinely kills me a little bit inside when I hear someone say that history is boring. How could history be boring? It's the story of humanity. How can people not want to know what happened in the past

I HATED history in school. Memorizing all those dates and names was torture for me.  I didn’t know that learning history didn’t have to be that way.
As an adult homeschool parent, I love being able to do it all over again and make sense of the events, their connections to one another, and their impacts today.  I also have a greater appreciation for how short 100 years is, lol.
I don’t ever test my kids on dates and names.  The big ones stick with them because they get the STORIES that go with them.

[kbutton]

8th--civics, state history (but the teacher didn't actually cover state history to my GREAT disappointment--I am still bitter about it)
9th--American History up to about the Civil War maybe?
10th--American History to modern times
11th--Government, which included reading about current news and events in class
12th--electives, including Economics, Psychology, Sociology (or something like it), and Justice Education (all about the court system--criminal and civil; included a program where you could ride along with the local police)

Our history was not white-washed, but it was also pretty mainstream. Teachers did bring up injustices, but it was more in the form of what the individual teacher was interested in bringing up, or it was mentioned in the context of what we were studying, and we didn't necessarily always go in depth. There are some things I learned about but really couldn't place, but I think it's just that the first pass through some of history can be confusing--reconstruction was messy and difficult to grasp as a high schooler, and I think I missed some of the significance of how that played out and how Jim Crow was established. I think I vaguely knew that former slaves did gain seats in legislatures, etc. but then laws were passed that made that difficult to impossible, but how it all worked together was really fuzzy for me. I think that's also about where the overlap between first and second year American History came into play, so that might be why it was vague.

As mining had been a big part of the local economy for many of our grandparents, there was a lot of talk about mine issues, strikes, pay in the form of scrip for the company store, etc. I think we also had a fair amount of time devoted to the major civil rights litigation. One teacher spent a lot of time on Native American culture. There was just so much to cover!

 

[Amira]

We had a cycle of state history, US history, and world history starting in 4th grade.  So you had state history in 4th, 7th and 10th grades, US history in 5th, 8th, and 11th grades, and so on.  We also had additional geography and civics classes, but I think those might have been electives in addition to the required classes, especially in high school.  And the world history class in high school had several different options to take.