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Love it when such things are said, what semester would you replace with African history? I'm graduating next year in Canada which has a relatively short histor

Love it when such things are said, what semester would you replace with African history? I'm graduating next year in Canada which has a relatively short history and yet in history we didn't have much free time to plug other topics. Imagine doing this in a country with richer history (i.e. any European country)

ChuckMcM 10y ago
The typical curriculum is 'American History' and 'World History'. But it seems to work well to cover each continent Antartica, Austrailia, Africa, China, India, S. America, N. America from 0 - present, and then cover in parallel when things crossed between continents. Doing it that way you come at the present with a bunch of different perspectives landing on the present day.
MiddleEndian 10y ago
If I could truly change how History were taught, I would eliminate the rote memorization. Any exam with multiple choice questions about what year something occurred in is missing the point, in my opinion. Lots more material could be covered without this.
jcranmer 10y ago
History is hard to teach well; there is way too much of it to instruct in any amount of time. You could probably fill an entire semester with nothing other than the causes of World War I, for example. You thus need to ask yourself why you're teaching history in the first place. In my school system, we taught history from 4th grade onwards as state history, world history, US history (for 2 years), civics, skip (•), world history, US history, and finally US government. World history usually hits Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Crusades, Reformation, Renaissance, Age of Discovery, maybe ancient China and India. I'm also pretty sure we somehow got a tiny bit of Mesoamerica squashed in there (although it was little more than "here's Olmecs and Maya and Aztecs, and there was this thing called Inca in the Andes"). You'll notice that everything after the founding of the US is pretty much ignored in world history, so you'll learn that (barring electives) mostly when you talk about it in the context of US history. Even though I often complain that "world" history usually just means European history, you'll also notice that an awful lot of European history is skipped. No discussion of major political events like the War of Spanish Succession, the Thirty Years' War, or the Spanish Reconquista (except as maybe a throwaway like "Spain was recently united and reconquered from the Muslims when Christopher Columbus came to court..."). Given the problems with history already, I don't think there is much hope for being able to give African history any decent coverage. Quite frankly, history classes are mostly geared towards nationalism (hopefully more about positive national pride and not about jingoism and ideas of national superiority) and focusing on foundations of Western thought, neither of which really benefit from learning about Africa. That said, it's probably worth expanding the unit on colonization to include brief histories of the colonized polities prior to colonization. For example, touch on Timbuktu's and Djenné's roles as major centers of Islamic learning in the Early Modern. A full picture of Africa is probably impossible to impart, but effort should be taken to avoid thinking of it only as lands just waiting to be colonized by Europeans. • I went to a magnet school which had slightly different scheduling than other schools in the county. I think it's supposed to be normally two years of world history, but the course in 9th grade was replaced with a technology course and you'd be expected to grab another credit of history via some elective... which is how I got a course that was history of art, architecture, and technology.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

The typical curriculum is 'American History' and 'World History'. But it seems to work well to cover each continent Antartica, Austrailia, Africa, China, India, S. America, N. America from 0 - present, and then cover in parallel when things crossed between continents. Doing it that way you come at the present with a bunch of different perspectives landing on the present day.

MiddleEndian 10y ago

If I could truly change how History were taught, I would eliminate the rote memorization. Any exam with multiple choice questions about what year something occurred in is missing the point, in my opinion. Lots more material could be covered without this.

jcranmer 10y ago

History is hard to teach well; there is way too much of it to instruct in any amount of time. You could probably fill an entire semester with nothing other than the causes of World War I, for example. You thus need to ask yourself why you're teaching history in the first place. In my school system, we taught history from 4th grade onwards as state history, world history, US history (for 2 years), civics, skip (•), world history, US history, and finally US government. World history usually hits Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Crusades, Reformation, Renaissance, Age of Discovery, maybe ancient China and India. I'm also pretty sure we somehow got a tiny bit of Mesoamerica squashed in there (although it was little more than "here's Olmecs and Maya and Aztecs, and there was this thing called Inca in the Andes"). You'll notice that everything after the founding of the US is pretty much ignored in world history, so you'll learn that (barring electives) mostly when you talk about it in the context of US history. Even though I often complain that "world" history usually just means European history, you'll also notice that an awful lot of European history is skipped. No discussion of major political events like the War of Spanish Succession, the Thirty Years' War, or the Spanish Reconquista (except as maybe a throwaway like "Spain was recently united and reconquered from the Muslims when Christopher Columbus came to court..."). Given the problems with history already, I don't think there is much hope for being able to give African history any decent coverage. Quite frankly, history classes are mostly geared towards nationalism (hopefully more about positive national pride and not about jingoism and ideas of national superiority) and focusing on foundations of Western thought, neither of which really benefit from learning about Africa. That said, it's probably worth expanding the unit on colonization to include brief histories of the colonized polities prior to colonization. For example, touch on Timbuktu's and Djenné's roles as major centers of Islamic learning in the Early Modern. A full picture of Africa is probably impossible to impart, but effort should be taken to avoid thinking of it only as lands just waiting to be colonized by Europeans. • I went to a magnet school which had slightly different scheduling than other schools in the county. I think it's supposed to be normally two years of world history, but the course in 9th grade was replaced with a technology course and you'd be expected to grab another credit of history via some elective... which is how I got a course that was history of art, architecture, and technology.