Let's take apart the US public school curriculum!

[Mandark]

I'm doing this to jack the discussion from the outside link thread, cause searching through mega-threads for one or two pages of conversation is a pain.

Anyway, an old observation from an Englishman: The US school system teaches the history of a nation, or a system of government.  European schools tend to teach the history of an area, going back well before the current system of nation-states.

I'm not sure how that affects the way Americans think, but it seems to be an indicator of how our national identity is formed differently from other countries, that rely more on shared ethnicity.  Which I think is good, and is why I get really cheesed off at the "America is a Christian nation" stuff (though it's definitely true in some senses).

[MrAngryFace]

Is he talkin about highschool? Cause all I remember from Highschool is that we called our History teacher Coach and he made us watch CNN a lot.

[Phoenix Dark]

Is he talkin about highschool? Cause all I remember from Highschool is that we called our History teacher Coach and he made us watch CNN a lot.

I basically agree with Mandark; certainly didn't think about it from that perspective before

[MrAngryFace]

I took Western Civ I-III in college, way more interesting than boring ol 'lets talk about WWII for the 80th goddamned time'

[TVC15]

Yeah, in regards to history, I don't think the American-centric view of history serves anyone well, and it certainly reinforces the AMERICA #1 attitude.  As I said in the other thread, I'm not very familiar with how other countries do it, but it's fairly obvious that the American way sucks nuts and reinforces a warped world view that isn't very useful.

[MrAngryFace]

Most countries suck nuts because people are involved, it just so happens we're allowed to say our country sucks nuts in our country and not deal with consequences!

[Mandark]

The big thing I've noticed in all these discussions is that because education is handled locally, there's a pretty wide array of experiences.  It'd be interesting to have everyone post what their schools covered, and compare notes.

I lived in a liberal enclave with a very highly rated school system, so we covered a bunch of the stuff that people say got left out in their schools: slavery, Jim Crow, Japanese internment, the trail of tears, the Gilded Age, etc.

Anyway...

4th Grade: Local history.  Lord Baltimore, etc.
5th: Lots of stuff on Native Americans, and some Oregon Trail type activities.
6th: Greeks and Egyptians.
7th-8th: Native Americans, The Sun He Dies, some Medieval & Renaissance European, some Asian, immigrant experience in the US.  It's all fuzzy before HS, can you tell?

9th: American History.  Starts just before Columbus, goes through WW1 or WW2.  Focuses on the political/social movements over particular incidents and date/place factoids.  Revolutionary War, Federalists vs. Republicans, Era of Good Feelings, Whigs then Democrats, Civil War, Reconstruction, Progressive and Populist Movements, etc.

10th: NSL Gov't.  First semester was how government works, second semester was basically modern US history.  Cold War and all that.  Teacher was basically cruising until retirement, so pretty fuzzy.

11th: World History.  First semester was just random factoids all over the map covering over a millenium.  Cradle of civilization!  Medieval Europe!  West African empires!  China's dynastic cycle!  Aztecs and Mayans!  The French Revolution!  Very confusing.  Second semester was mostly the World Wars, and more coherent.

Looking back, there's a lot of repetition between elementary and HS, but that makes sense.  How much are you really going to absorb when you're 9?

One thing I'd overhaul is world history.  We got half a year in HS that covered this century, and it did very little to make sense of what's happening now.  The US history was actually very good, and put things in context.

[MrAngryFace]

You remember all that? Wow.

Not being sarcastic. I can't remember past freshman year highschool.

[TVC15]

My high school curriculum appears similar to yours in structure.  It seems some of the World History subjects covered are a bit different.  We didn't get much european history post-discovery of the US, aside from covering the rest of the relevant explorers.

Modern European history for us was basically "England still has a royal family but it's not really a monarchy anymore."  French history was effectively not covered at all (including pre-US), which I think is pretty common, judging by the blanks I got when talking about the subject in college.

I believe we got a little Chinese history, but only in the context of it being a cradle of civilization, and amongst all the other cradles, it was probably covered least.  We got Greek and Roman history.  Roman history is the first incidence of having to memorize important years (fall of Rome, I believe).  We learned that Rome fell do to germanic goth tribes, but learning the history of the goths (and other awesome tribes) wasn't a priority.  Medieval history was basically not taught or covered at all.  I believe we jumped right from Rome to the Renaissance, or the age of explorers.

US history, I'd say we covered decently well, but as alluded to in the other thread, there were definitely some pretty important things skipped, and the overall tone of history was very American-centric.  For example, most people that went through the same curriculum as I probably thought that the US single handedly was the reason the Axis lost in WWII.  The contributions of others were basically not covered in any detail.  Oh, also, while the anti-commie US stuff was covered as being a dark period, there was little effort made to cover why Communism rose in Russia and China in the first place.  As a matter of fact, I think many people that went through the same curriculum as I would even be able to tell you why the Soviets were bad.

We got a full year covering the US government, which I think was a bit excessive, considering that the information isn't particularly useful, and above all things, I think state-mandated education should be useful before all else.  That said, I can definitely see the argument for such a thing being necessary.  I just question whether a full year of it is needed.

[Mandark]

MAF: Pre-HS is very fuzzy, and I'm probably leaving out 80%+ of it.  It's mostly recollections of concrete activities and events, and tying that to what we must have been learning about.

I remember doing a group activity that was like a non-computer Oregon Trail, so we must have been learning about the pioneers.  I remember writing a character sketch of a Venetian trader, so we must have been studying Renaissance Europe.  Stuff like that.

[etiolate]

I found American history to be a bit boring compared to other histories. I don't remember the other histories. I use to have a great interest in ancient history and archeology before my history classes killed me my interest in it. I don't remember learning much in highschool. I find that a common sentiment.

In the outside link thread there was talk of the math & sciences being behind or a concern, but I don't know where you would get that.  The math & sciences is all the focus, because highschool is a worker/consumer factory. It is a balanced education, featuring arts and humanities that is what is fading. For the worker/consumer factory ideal, math & sciences is perfect for the current job world. Math classes went higher up than history or other subjects that I can think of at highschool.

My problem with highschool is the whole system. I would remove most of it. Have public education as it is now up to age 14 or 15. After that I would dissolve public highschool into a light college system.  Remove the social war/status that is established in highschool and has a hard time fading away. I went to school to learn and do school work. I was surrounded by those who went to school for the scial atmosphere. The school rewarded them, allowing more leanway for extra curricular activity and favoritism for social status. I just went to learn and do work, and it felt sort of looked down upon. The problem is that the public highschool system does not feel like a learning institution. There is many things that come before learning.

And in some  manners, other things coming before learning is fine. I knew kids who had too much going on in their personal lives to deal with crappy public highschool classes. It may have been better for them to be working or somewhere else. The majorit of things that come before learning at schools is not okay though.

So open it up to college like fashion by age 15, allow teenagers to pick their courses, and do not make it mandatory. The goal is to erase social hierarchy and the non-educational stuff, while also allowing flexibility for all the other crap that is going on in the life of a teenager. Also, since classes are not mandatory and youth will be picking theirown, it might allow for less sanitized and sterilized books and classes. Just completely tear down the current system.

My education seems to be different than others here. I had a strange highschool for awhile, and was at highs and lows through my educational life.  I know I started at the back of class because they worried about a speech problem. I switched schools and they moved me into GATE. My junior high taught Islam. My first highschool allowed me to do my literature courses on more modern books like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. We read Interview With the Vampire in the classroom and discussed its use of eroticism with its words. I took computer science and computer repair. I also worked half the day for work education, going to class from about 11am to 2:45 and working till about 6pm.

Then I switched to a normal highschool in a more more affluent area. The differences and the problems were obvious to me within the first week.Since then I've been for tearing down the public highschool system and replacing it with a more open system.

[TVC15]

My high school, my public high school, pretty much let good students pick their curriculum for the last two years (although there were still state requirements that had to be met, like 1 English course a year and so on).  Not so great students didn't have as much freedom in that regard.  I thought it was handled decently.  I kind of like the idea that education is the required focus of a person's life until age 18.  Or at least I would like it if the system weren't quite so wonky.

[Human Snorenado]

The high school I went to for grades 9 and 10 was rural Georgia in the process of turning into suburban Georgia.  Lots of basic American and world history covering the basics.  Overcrowded classrooms and stupid teachers = the bare minimum.

My junior and senior years, I went to a school that was as good as a public school can get- upscale Atlanta neighborhood, lots of foreign exchange students and cool shit to do.  We had very good history and govt. teachers that covered things from multiple perspectives over American and world histories.

Yes, I certainly do think that the way you're indoctrinated at an impressionable age will impact your view of the world and your country's place in it.

[bluemax]

Hmm for history in highschool I had:

9th Grade Washington St. History/World History
A semester for each. I got very little out of this class as our coach was more interested in being the ASB Advisor/Boy's Hoop/Girl's Tennis coach. We actually begged the football coach to teach us as we got more out of it.

10th Grade Honors American History
Same deal, teach was more interested in being coach/advisor than teacher. Only thing I remember is cussing him out and writing some sarcastic papers.

11th Grade I didn't take history because my school was lame and had me take some class  about writing checks making it so I couldn't take AP Euro like all my friends.

12th Grade AP Government.
Awesome class, awesome teacher. Exception to the rule.

Science:

9th Grade
Earth Science. We did in class assignments that consisted of copying sentences from our text books. And we watched Bill Nye.

10th Grade
Biology, I switched instructors after first semester but this was okay. Honors was better than normal bio though.

11th Grade
Chemistry. I remember watching Jerry Springer and making cookies. And we did some equation stuff.

12th Grade
None. My school had only one science class I could take, Physics and it was at the same time as AP Calc.

Math

9th Grade
Geometry. My math instructor told me to ask some chick in class for help any time I got stuck.

10th Grade
Integrated Math 3, some god awful amalgamation of Trig and Geometry.

11th Grade
Pre Calc. My instructor was hot.

12th Grade
AP Calc, even hotter teacher. I retook Calc 1 twice after this :/

Washington Public schools suck and they got even worse when they started teaching students to pass the WASL instead of actual teaching.

[thekavorka]

I think my school district did a pretty good job of not just covering an "America Fuck Yeah" view of history.

4th grade: Texas History
5th grade: Native American stuff and US History

6th grade: World History from like Mesopatamia all the way to Cold War
7th grade: More Texas History and Native American stuff
8th grade: US History from the different native american civilizations to the Civil War

9th grade: World Geography
10th grade: World History covering like everything
11th grade: US History
12th grade: Government

People also had the option to take AP European History, but only a few did since it was hard as shit.

[Candyflip]

I think the fact that some people actually cannot pass the California High School exit exam speaks volumes of our education. That or some people are just genuine idiots. Here are some samples of the problems found on this test: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/hs/resources.asp

[Mandark]

For science I went 9th - Biology, 10th - Chemistry, 11th - Physics.

TVC had a point in the other thread about the way science is taught, where students are exposed to the sciences themselves without a grounding in the process.  That sounds about right, and I remember reading an editorial way back when I was in the habit of arguing with creationists on the internet, saying we need to teach less science factoids, and more about how theory and experiments work.

I would love to see a yearlong HS course in which students learn how research is done in general, how it varies from field to field, how disputes are arbitrated, etc.

Most people aren't going to use the physics, bio or chem they learn, but just about everyone is going to read a bajillion stories that start "According to a new study..."  It'd be nice if we equipped our youth with good BS detectors.

[Loki]

For science I went:

8th grade - "Earth Science"
9th grade - Advanced Biology (just a more rigorous general bio course)
10th grade - Chemistry
11th grade - Physics and Astronomy (my HS was one of the couple in NY with an actual planetarium, which was awesome)

All of these sciences save for astronomy concluded with a "Regents" exam, sort of a qualifying semi-advanced NY state exam (generally more difficult than teachers' final exams, but less difficult than AP exams).  Could've done AP science in 12th grade since AP courses were just coming into vogue, but by that point my life -- especially my academic life -- was already screwed up.   Basic scientific theory -- the concepts of hypotheses, experiments, controls, dependent/independent variables etc. -- was taught in elementary school, I want to say by the 4th grade (age 10), since I recall doing simple plant experiments at home and participating in science fairs by that age.

[Mandark]

Yeah, that's the main place where they cover the scientific process.  You get the three-sided cardboard version of it: Hypothesis, Procedure, Data, Conclusion, etc.

I'd like to say that schools, especially in HS, should focus on the things that will be applicable in real life (history that gives context to current events, science that let's you understand headlines, etc.) but that would probably mean stepping into the political, which would mean people getting pissed off.

Like this sort of thing.

And as long as we're breaking out the high-level electives, I was taking AP English Lit, French Lit, Calculus, and Chemistry my senior year.  So neener neener.

[thekavorka]

lol noob

Sophomore year:
AP Geography

Junior Year:

AP US History
AP Comp Sci
AP English
AP Psychology

Senior Year:
AP BC Calc
AP English Lit
AP Micro Econ
AP Macro Econ
AP Biology
AP Comp Sci II

[Loki]

Yeah, that's the main place where they cover the scientific process.  You get the three-sided cardboard version of it: Hypothesis, Procedure, Data, Conclusion, etc.

I'd like to say that schools, especially in HS, should focus on the things that will be applicable in real life (history that gives context to current events, science that let's you understand headlines, etc.) but that would probably mean stepping into the political, which would mean people getting pissed off.

Like this sort of thing.

And as long as we're breaking out the high-level electives, I was taking AP English Lit, French Lit, Calculus, and Chemistry my senior year.  So neener neener.

Well, I didn't break out any high level electives, since I was barely going to class from junior year onward.  I agree with your general point about teaching in a way which will be of more practical use, and which fosters critical thinking.  Ever read any Dewey?  He had great ideas about educational theory relating to pragmatism (both the common term and the school of thought) that were never really embraced.

[Mandark]

Bugger philosophy!  That's my motto.

I took some philosophy of politics class way back, and got cheesed off at what I saw as the general irrelevancy of what I was reading, plus how much of a dick Socrates was in his dialectics.

For all the basic disagreement on the goals of education, the actual failures of implementation seem like a much more pressing problem.

Raoul Duke's post is a good one for illustrating the problem.  There's a wide gap among our public schools, even within states, and it generally correlates with the socioeconomic makeup of the school districts.  It's self-reinforcing, because if schools are good, it jacks up the real estate values, which serves as a de facto economic filter, which defeats the whole purpose of a public school system.

[etiolate]

Hrm the richer schools here aren't exactly the best. My sister said her best highschool was one of the most rundown ones in a very middle class area, just with good teachers. My first highschool was in a lower middle class area, but again, just with good teachers. The richer highschool had nicer things, tons of computers, but its priorities were all screwy.

[The Fake Shemp]

I had the same curriculum as Mandark, so his theory is bogus.

[Mandark]

And we're both burnouts!

I mean... I'm a burnout and you're a successful manager in the distribution arm of the interactive entertainment industry.

[bagofeyes]

Let's talk about Australian schools too, yeah?

spoiler (click to show/hide)

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[brawndolicious]

mine was a pretty upper middle class neighborhood.  for example, a korean business newspaper apparently said we are the best city to move to and raise children.  CNN did a story last year on a local school having a "white flight" because too many asians are going to the school.  this MIGHT be the best example.

4th grade: california history.  pueblos, missionaries, etc.  a few things on the spanish but NOTHING dirty.
5th grade: plymouth rock, colonies, expansion west, oregon trail maps, a few things on the Native Americans.
6th grade: egyptian, babylonians, mesopotamia, and greece.  very light review of all of those.
7th grade: islam, buddhism, hinduism, and japanese history.  pretty light overview on all of those too.
8th grade: american history.  revolutionary war, constitution, etc.
9th grade: no history for freshman here lol.
10th grade: 20th century world history.  WW1 and 2.
11th grade: a little bit about philosophers.  communism, etc.  the most I got out of it was when my teacher said it was against the law for her to say communism is good.
12th grade: 2 quarters economics, 2 quarters american government.  learned that great depression was bad and watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, basically.

I remember when I was like 8, I read this historical fiction (I think) on this Native American chief's daughter and how she saw her tribe raped and killed and her people moved farther and farther and it was the most effed up book I have ever read to today even.  I only read it because the woman on the cover looked like pocohantas.  best history book I ever read.

[Mandark]

You were in the US public school system starting in at least 4th grade!?

!?!??!

...

?????????????

...

!???!?!!!?!?!?!??!!!!??!?!!?!!???

[brawndolicious]

I only remember back to 4th grade.  I don't think we even had a history textbook before then.

[Mandark]

Suddenly your language skills are fair game!  I can diss your grammar guilt-free!  So liberating.

[brawndolicious]

you bet.  all my teachers thought I had good grammar too.  and punctuation.  I don't even know wtf punctuation means but I have it!

[TVC15]

Bugger philosophy!  That's my motto.

Oddly enough, if public education made ANY ATTEMPT to teach logic, which is not a difficult subject, I think there would be many, many more people legitimately interested in philosophy.