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History
I'm putting together thoughts for an article on history, but I might as well have a few extra facts to back up my thesis.
Data from people outside the UK would be particularly helpful (though UK is also good).
The history I remember from school is roughly: Norman conquest, Elizabethan era, the Victorians. We got some of the Greeks and Romans in classical studies. My boys certainly did WW2 in addition and one did Stalinist Russia.
So, what key historic events were you taught in school?
What peices of history have you read since for your own interest? And why? (I can count the Ottoman Empire and a moderate chunk of Islamic stuff, the war between Canada and the USA, medieval warfare, a bit of Egyptology and various other snippets. Each of those had a reason at the time for me to read about it, but I won't mention the reasons yet.)
I have predictions as to what Americans and Australians will have been taught, but I'd like to see how close I am.
Also, what languages did you have the options of learning and what options do the current generation of children have in your country (I'm assuming there may have been shifts recently) Which languages did you chose to learn and why?
Data from people outside the UK would be particularly helpful (though UK is also good).
The history I remember from school is roughly: Norman conquest, Elizabethan era, the Victorians. We got some of the Greeks and Romans in classical studies. My boys certainly did WW2 in addition and one did Stalinist Russia.
So, what key historic events were you taught in school?
What peices of history have you read since for your own interest? And why? (I can count the Ottoman Empire and a moderate chunk of Islamic stuff, the war between Canada and the USA, medieval warfare, a bit of Egyptology and various other snippets. Each of those had a reason at the time for me to read about it, but I won't mention the reasons yet.)
I have predictions as to what Americans and Australians will have been taught, but I'd like to see how close I am.
Also, what languages did you have the options of learning and what options do the current generation of children have in your country (I'm assuming there may have been shifts recently) Which languages did you chose to learn and why?
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For my own interest, I've done a bit of reading on the whole medieval period (AD 500-1500, roughly), though not specialising in any particular century or region. Well, nothing more localised than 'Europe', including Russia and the Middle East. I also used to be well into WW2, with light reading of general military history of all eras, but nothing deep.
Browsing through second-hand bookshops (not that I get to visit many), I get irked by the way there's masses of books on English medieval history but not much on the rest of the world. Even Scotland and Wales get short shrift. Ottonians, Capetians, Jagellos - forget it. Which is a bummer, IMO.
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French was compulsory, the top two streams started a second language in what is now Y8, choice of German or Latin (I did Latin, failed badly). One language could be dropped when choosing O levels.
Primary school, we were told stories of the kings of England.
Grammar school we started with prehistory, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans. Then we moved onto English history. Saxon invasions, Norman conquest, Plantagenets, wars of the Roses, Tudors.
Then we started compulsory history O level. American war of independence, French revolution, Napoleon, Chartists, lots of acts of parliament. I was allowed to abandon history at that point as hopeless (15% in exams) because I couldn't remember dates of acts of parliament. I was taught nothing between the Tudors and American war of independence.
Since then I joined an archaeology evening class and have become interested in the history of science and industry.
My eldest (now 27) didn't study history to any extent, middle child (24) had more of a social history syllabus, so studied the development of education, medicine and farming, youngest had Russian revolution and the rise of Hitler (but not WW2, they stopped in about 1937)
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http://www.livejournal.com/users/insidian/198257.html
It's all about history as it is taught in schools, and looks like pretty much exactly what you're after.
Languages - I started secondary school in the UK in 1993. At that time, my school (a grammar) taught German and French as first foreign language to alternate years (ie I did German, the year after did French, then the next year German again). Then in second year, you had a choice of Latin or whichever language you didn't have in first year. First language was taken to GCSE; second could be taken as an option. Latin was very much a minority option (out of 96 girls, 20 took it in second year, 3 did GCSE and 1 did A-Level).
I did German and Latin, both to A-Level. German, obviously, was compulsory, but I'd been interested in the country, history and culture for years anyway, so kept going with it. Then I was never interested in French, and had been a Latin / Roman geek for ages anyway, so I chose that. I really enjoyed it, actually, and ended up persuading my teachers to let me take it to A-Level - although it meant having to join the year above for those lessons, and complete the course in one year rather than two... I went on to study archaeology, for some of the same reasons I liked Latin.
However, the year ahead of me had a different system, and I think they all did Spanish, with (IIRC) French and Latin as the later options. No German at all. The year before *them* did mostly Russian and Spanish, I believe. So it did change quite a lot. As far as I'm aware, though, Russian and Spanish were never offered after 1991/1992.
After me, they used the system I described for some years, but by the time I left, they'd made Latin compulsory for at least one year - I think they dropped that fairly soon, though.
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My brother (much envy) did things like the rise of Israel and the Yom Kippur war.
For my own interet I've read around Egypt, Rome, some classical Greece, Alexander and his conquests, World War II, particularly Rommel, the North African campaign, the western front after D-Day and the fall of Berlin, plus (for my German A level) Germany after the war up to the fall of the Berlin wall.
Languages, I gave up French, the only language course my school offered when I was 14, and still regret it. Took up German for my own interest as an adult (I was 38 or 39) and went on to get GCSE and A level in it.
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I did that too, though as part of the Arab-Israeli conflict, going back to the zionist movements in the late 19th C., through to the 1973 war. The great thing about it was that this was in 1976, so we were studying events only 3 years old. I don't really think of my history classes as being about "events". I recall having to do Roman Britain about 3 or 4 times, the history of medicine (from neolithic times), the Industrial Revolution, the development of the railways, history of China from the 1920's to 1971, the Norman conquest, Elizabethan times, the renaissance, the English Civil Wars.
For my own interest I've read a lot of American history, particularly the American Civil War and the Revolutionary War. Also quite a bit of 18th & 19th C. military and naval history.
The only language I did was French, to O level. I was terrible at it. I could have done German instead, but I would have had to drop chemistry. This was all in England.
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I had the option of learning French or Spanish, although the lower schools in the towns that fed into the high school chose only one to teach, because they didn't have enough kids to teach both, so we were started in one before we got a choice. (Small towns can't afford a lot of extra teachers.) They were phasing out German while I was in school, and I think they offered a limited amount of beginning Latin.
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History taught at school: colinization and early Australian history, a bit of WW2 I think. I'm sure there were other things, but I can't remember...
Art History: Ancient Greek, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Renaisannce, Impressionism, Dadaism, Cubism, other 20th-century art movements
Linguistics at University: history of the English language (Saxons, Danes, Normans...)
History I've picked up on my own from historical novels: WW2, Roman Empire, Middle-Ages, Regency (though I've no idea of the context of the Regency...)
History I've picked up on my own from other sources: Ancient Egypt (I'm sure you can figure out the reason for that!)
Languages I was offered at school: French, German
Languages my nieces and nephews are offered at school: Indonesian, Japanese, (maybe Chinese too) (I'm not sure if French and German are still offered)
Me, I started learning French, but we were moving around so much into different curriculums that I had to drop it. And I chose it because I liked my French teacher!
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That, presumably, was the phase wherein everyone was obliged to change their name to Colin :)
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Australian history (which was compulsory) started with the European explorers like Vasco da Gama, Magellan and Bougainville, then the Dutch explorers of Australia like Hertzog, Jansz and Tasman and finally the British ones, Dampier, Cook, Bass and Flinders. After covering the establishment of the colony of New South Wales and the early history, such as the Rum Corps, Bligh and Macquarie, the syllabus then went on to the inland explorers like Blaxland, Hume, Sturt, Leichardt and of course, Burke and Wills. By the end of High School we got as far past the Gold Rush but not to Federation.
Since the 20th Century is now over, teachers feel more comfortable teaching it and Federation and the Great War are now covered, which we didn't do, although there'd be an explanation of Gallipoli every Anzac Day.
Ancient history class covered the Egyptians, the Israelites, the Persians and the Greeks. We never got to the Romans. Passing Year 12 exams required a detailed knowledge of the campaigns of Alexander the Great.
Other history was generally optional.
At high school, I took one unit of Asian history, which covered the history of Indonesia. Other units available (which I did not take) covered China and Japan. There is more emphasis on this these days.
I also took one unit of American history (ie US history; there was nothing about Argentina or Canada), on the Antebellum period, ie 1800-1860. The others units which I didn't take covered rest of US history, up to 1800 and from 1860 to 1900.
There was also Modern History, which I didn't take, but which was about the Renaissance and Reformation.
Since then:
Well actually, even then, I bought a lot of books on military history. A glance at the book shelves behind me reveals a staggering nine devoted to World War II, three to the Great War, one to Ancient history and one to post-1945 conflicts in Vietnam, the Arab-Israeli Wars, the Falklands, East Timor and the Gulf Wars. There's also a shelf divided between books on the development of nuclear weapons and books on space exploration.
Languages:
We were taught French and Russian. It wasn't voluntary. Some details about French and Russian history were occasionally taught in these classes.
Since my time there has been a move towards teaching Asian languages like Indonesian.
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Primary school I find hard to recall, but I think it was a mixture of basic Eurocentric world history (bit of Roman, bit of Greek, bit of 1066 and all That' stuff without the jokes... and yes, WW2) plus a (from a modern POV) extremely scanty amount of Australian, just the 'populist' stuff: Damper and Captain Cook, Botany Bay and convicts, the bushrangers, Gallipoli and Anzacs (or maybe that's all I can recall). Australians are so fuzzy on their own history that a government-sponsored set of ads made a point of it a couple of years back - that pretty well no one knew the name of Australia's first Prime Minister (of course we all do now - but the second..?)
In high school I did both ancient and modern history, which was pretty much as above but with more Australian content (very very little Asian or American, however). At Uni, I studied ancient and early medieval history, then Europe 1919-45.
I read a lot of history, with an emphasis on social history and the lives of ordinary people (I love biographies, letters, diaries etc). Just about any and every period and place at some time... I subscribe to the magazine History Today from the UK (their book reviews are lethal to my bank balance).
Languages - I'm not sure of that compulsory Japanese they talked about some years back actually happened. I took Indonesian at high school, and forgot the lot soon after :(
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I occasionally buy a copy, though like BBC History it's really a forum for authors to plug their latest book with a potted resume of an article. Whilst every period has its own degree of interest, I'd prefer something a bit more specialist, but popular as history is, no particular period seems to be big enough to support a popular periodical.
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The Uni I work at gets in quite a few of the seriously serious journals if I'm chasing specific articles on a time or place...
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The last counts as read for interest though as I did the course as adult ed.
History stuff I've read bits of since is mostly much older and a bit eclectic; Roman and Greek stuff, Tudor England, Medici period of Rome/Florence, bits of Art History, odd articles all over the periods in the BBC History magazines.
At primary school my daughter so far has done the Greeks, but I know they have Romans, Castles, Victorian England, and Tudor England to come.
Kathy
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The history I remember doing pre-GCSE: the Romans in Britain, the Spanish armada, the industrial revolution, a bit about suffragettes. I'm sure there was other stuff, but I don't remember it.
My GCSE Modern History course was called 'the history of conflict in the twentieth century' and covered: the League of Nations, causes of WWI, the end of WWI, the interwar years in Britain and the founding of the Welfare State, the rise of Hitler, causes of WWII, the use of atomic weaponry in WWII, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Cold War, the Vietnam War.
At unversity I did bits and pieces of history associated with my theology degree: the intertestamental period including the Hellenization of the Hebrew world, and first-century Israel including the historical Jesus.
Languages taught in my school: French, German and Spanish. I was assigned German to start with and took up Spanish at GCSE. I continued German at sixth form. At university I had the option of learning Biblical Greek and/or ancient Hebrew, and chose to learn Hebrew.