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Author Topic: US History in North Carolina
Stephan
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OSC's new article bothers me a bit. I had to do a little more research. I really don't see a conspiaracy here. It looks like they want to break up US History into different grades. That is what my county has done for a while now. 1776 - 2009 is A LOT to cover in one year, let alone one semester that most high schools have changed to.

This article gives a little more:

http://www.lincolntribune.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=16384

My students learn US History from 1776 - reconstruction in 8th grade. They learn about post-reconstruction through modern times in ninth grade. Most students at this point begin taking the high school assessment exam in which US History makes up 25%.

I do see room for debate though. It really is a tough call. You can break it up and place it all in high school, ignoring world history and cultures. You can slam it all together into one semester as OSC proposes, and have the teacher rush through it. Or you can start in middle school, and risk students lack of comprehension on the constitution. Tough debate, but I don't see a conspiracy.

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kmbboots
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After reading the article I rather wish that someone had done a better of teaching Mr. Card history.
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Christine
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I think breaking up history by year is great if you can keep it consistent. I know that growing up I did the founding of American through the Revolutionary War so many times it hurts my head to think about. We made it to the Civil War a couple of times. For all the influence they have on modern times, the world wars got amazingly little coverage in my educational experience. In first through twelfth grade, post-WWII to the present was covered exactly once.
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ambyr
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When the heck did they start teaching U.S. history in 11th grade, anyway? When I went to high school in North Carolina in 1998-2001, we had U.S. History in 9th and 10th grade (yes, two full years). 11th grade was for World History.

Why is it revolutionary to take U.S. history out of 11th grade when it wasn't in there less than ten years ago?

I suspect any push back from educators comes from being sick and tired of having to restructure their curriculum every few years to conform to the latest dictate.

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Samprimary
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Look, I know that ragging on OSC's articles is getting extremely commonplace, but that's because they're getting extremely lazy, derisive, and unsupportable.

For instance, I'll give everyone a hint if they haven't read the latest one.

This line:

quote:
As long as a single child grows up to vote Republican, these educators feel that they have failed.
is the exact point at which one can safely stop taking anything Orson Scott Card says about educators seriously.

And then, guess what! Guess! guess guess guess. It turns out that after all his criticisms of the degeneration of political discourse in this country between the Left and the Right, he has decided to start using the term "Leftaliban" again.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he calls them the Leftaliban.

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Stephan
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quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
\
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he calls them the Leftaliban.

Better than Lazis, or Left Qaeda.
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Christine
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Ok, I actually went to read (all right, skim) OSC's article. Wow. So, we're not supposed to teach anything recent because then we might be brainwashing our children? The only way to turn out informed citizens is to focus on our grand origins and ignore anything that might be remotely politically charged? That seems like the exact way to turn out UNinformed citizens.
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Stephan
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quote:
Originally posted by Christine:
Ok, I actually went to read (all right, skim) OSC's article. Wow. So, we're not supposed to teach anything recent because then we might be brainwashing our children? The only way to turn out informed citizens is to focus on our grand origins and ignore anything that might be remotely politically charged? That seems like the exact way to turn out UNinformed citizens.

Basically. Not to mention that current events are part of history curriculum at EVERY level.
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kmbboots
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I think that people may also be underestimating the abilities of younger students to learn history.

I wonder if, rather than break it up by year, it might make sense to do the very basics - dates, characters, wars, and so forth - more broadly at the younger grades and then use that as a base for more analysis and deeper study in high school.

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Dobbie
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quote:
Originally posted by Stephan:
quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
\
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he calls them the Leftaliban.

Better than Lazis, or Left Qaeda.
How about Liber-Al Qaeda?
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scifibum
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Wait...

I'm a bit taken aback.

The actual proposal is to spend MORE time teaching students US history - some of it in one grade, and the rest of it later - and OSC writes an entire article based on the misunderstanding that the intent is to hide/obscure half of it?

This makes me sad. It's one thing to show bias in how you interpret information, how you fit it together. It's another to demonstrate that you didn't even minimally check the facts. [Frown]

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LargeTuna
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I'm in 11th grade AP history. We do it in less than a semester because the AP test is before the end of the year. It's the most intense high work speedy class I've ever taken. My teacher is an Independant that tends to vote Republican. I live in an 85% Democrat area and nobody cares about the political views of our teacher as long as he is doing a good job (he is). He wishes hd could teach the subject all year so we could actually go into SOME depth, but the district wont let him have a double block class even though all the science classes (even the non-AP) are full year.

I didn't read the OSC article, but I know the system I'm in is flawed and would love to take a US history pt 1 and a US history pt 2 class.

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BlackBlade
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While I think Mr. Card might be missing some information regarding this development, I don't think you can find many people with more passion for the importance of history than him.

It was because of him scripting a series of dramatized American history tapes, that I was able to thrive in an AM Studies class in 11th grade. He is as responsible as anybody else, my teachers included, for encouraging me to walk down the path of a political scientist.

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Godric
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quote:
Originally posted by Dobbie:
quote:
Originally posted by Stephan:
quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
\
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he calls them the Leftaliban.

Better than Lazis, or Left Qaeda.
How about Liber-Al Qaeda?
Some jerk in my office's parking garage has a bumper sticker: Obama 'bin Lyin'

Pisses me off every time I see it. I mean, I'm all for freedom of expression, but c'mon.

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kmbboots
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quote:
Originally posted by BlackBlade:
While I think Mr. Card might be missing some information regarding this development, I don't think you can find many people with more passion for the importance of history than him.

It was because of him scripting a series of dramatized American history tapes, that I was able to thrive in an AM Studies class in 11th grade. He is as responsible as anybody else, my teachers included, for encouraging me to walk down the path of a political scientist.

Well he seems to miss the fact that the Civil War was about more than altruistic Northerners freeing the slaves and the fact that Democrats and Republicans basically switched positions during the Civil Rights era.
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Lyrhawn
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quote:
Originally posted by kmbboots:
I think that people may also be underestimating the abilities of younger students to learn history.

I wonder if, rather than break it up by year, it might make sense to do the very basics - dates, characters, wars, and so forth - more broadly at the younger grades and then use that as a base for more analysis and deeper study in high school.

I think the problem with this is that whenever I tell someone I'm getting a degree in history, their eyes glaze over and they say "oy, all those names and dates." Most kids I've talked to learned the names and dates for the test, and then forgot them the next day.

And to be perfectly honest, with some exceptions, a lot of names and dates aren't really that important. Concepts are important. I agree with breaking it up by year. I'm impressed that so much time is being spent. At my high school, we had two semesters of U.S. History, one of World History, and then an elective. I took AP U.S. History with the elective credit. But I wish I would have had more time with it all. College survey courses break it up that way as well. US History from 1715 to 1877 and then 1877 to present. 1877 is as good a stopping point as any other time with the end of reconstruction.

I agree by the way, that I wish someone had taught OSC better history.

quote:
From OSC:
Instead, we'll get a picture of America where black people are always oppressed by white people, and only the Democratic Party has acted to give them rights.

::snort:: Right, because starting in 1877, Democrats were a wellspring of rights for blacks. Is he kidding with this stuff? Once Reconstruction ended, Democrats effectively outlawed the Republican party in the south, and went on a hundred year reign of oppression and terror against blacks. I don't even know where to begin what's wrong with his statement, but I'd probably start with the fact that Democrat and Republican didn't even mean the same thing regionally during the time in question, and that division only became more pronounced in the 20th century. He is being far too blase with the terms he is throwing around.

It seems to me that OSC History would be without any sort of judgments, which is ridiculous. If history was neutral, half of it wouldn't be worth studying except as vague points of interest. People made good decisions, people made bad decisions, all of those decisions got us to where we are today. There is absolutely nothing wrong with saying that. It's not political. It's our history. It can be used politically by people today, but it is not in and of itself political.

Seriously, you can't come up with anything good, so you resort to this?

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Geraine
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quote:
Originally posted by Godric:
quote:
Originally posted by Dobbie:
quote:
Originally posted by Stephan:
quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
\
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he calls them the Leftaliban.

Better than Lazis, or Left Qaeda.
How about Liber-Al Qaeda?
Some jerk in my office's parking garage has a bumper sticker: Obama 'bin Lyin'

Pisses me off every time I see it. I mean, I'm all for freedom of expression, but c'mon.

Meh, I've seen equally offensive bumper stickers for other presidents. Bush and Clinton has some really horrible ones back in their day. It is unfortunate, but more common than you think.
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BlackBlade
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I've actually seen Palin's "How's the Hopey Changey stuff working out?" on a bumper sticker. It made me really want to buy The Daily Show's response sticker, "Palin: Abandon all hope that anything will ever change."
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theamazeeaz
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quote:
Originally posted by LargeTuna:
I'm in 11th grade AP history. We do it in less than a semester because the AP test is before the end of the year. It's the most intense high work speedy class I've ever taken. My teacher is an Independant that tends to vote Republican. I live in an 85% Democrat area and nobody cares about the political views of our teacher as long as he is doing a good job (he is). He wishes hd could teach the subject all year so we could actually go into SOME depth, but the district wont let him have a double block class even though all the science classes (even the non-AP) are full year.

I didn't read the OSC article, but I know the system I'm in is flawed and would love to take a US history pt 1 and a US history pt 2 class.

In my AP US History class (2002-2003 in Rhode Island) we just didn't get far enough into the 20th century and that was even with skipping the Civil War (we did before and after and were told to just read the chapter and take a quiz over February break). We also read the first four chapters of the history book over the summer-I think my teacher had no concept of pacing whatsoever. There was a class-wide cuss when we opened our DBQ to find that it was about the Great Depression that May.

I would have loved to spend as much time on later events as we did on earlier events and if it meant more of it later, then great.

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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by scifibum:
It's one thing to show bias in how you interpret information, how you fit it together. It's another to demonstrate that you didn't even minimally check the facts. [Frown]

And that's what really gets me about the whole situation: it's one thing if someone posts a reasonabe argument, and you could agree or disagree with it based on ideological or moral points of contention or acceptance.

What OSC has devolved to is where the 'reasonable argument' never comes to fruition. It's not a matter of disagreeing with him ideologically. He's making statements which are simply non-factual and don't stand up to a minimal review of the facts.

Worse still, he uses language in a way which blows the whole thing into extremes. The claims he make are worded with blatant use of extremes and generalizations which can't be true, and his rants waft in and out of them with no cue as to whether or not we're supposed to be taking his claims literally. They are all presented genuinely, which means that you can't take them seriously.

Let's parse a few things he says in the first half of the article.

- The ENTIRE educational establishment of almost every state feel that they have failed if any student of theirs grows up Republican.

- It is an established GOAL of these establishments to ensure that students learn that only the Democratic party has acted to give black people rights.

- These educational establishments will only in rare exceptions not label religion, free enterprise, and the Republican party explicitly as being bad

- The extreme Left or 'Leftaliban' assuredly has COMPLETE control ALMOST EVERYWHERE of the teacher's unions and educational institutions.

- They specifically do not want to teach students history prior to 1877; the motive is EXPLICITLY BECAUSE it 'teaches [students] to think for themselves' and they actively do not want this

- There is no 'real science' in ecology classes that are not taught as part of a biology class.

- there is no such thing as an educational expert. ANYWHERE. it is impossible to be an expert on the subject of educational issues or, presumably, the science of designing and managing effective educational institutions.

at the midpoint, the article dissolves even further into a full-blown angry rant.

quote:
The Leftaliban, on the other hand, though it calls itself "liberal," prefers speech codes to silence dissent, and allows students at universities to shout down or at least disinvite speakers who don't agree with the Leftaliban's positions on any issue.

The Leftaliban thinks Fox News is evil (instead of, as has been proven over and over again, the most impartial of all news broadcasters). The Leftaliban thinks Obama is God. Er, pardon me, god, since they have little patience with those who believe in God, unless it's a non-Judeo-Christian one.

Considering he has already EXPLICITLY defined the vast, near-total controlling faction of the educational establishments in this country AND all the teachers unions as BEING the Leftaliban, he is saying that these things are true of ALL of them. It's a froth-mouthed massive strawman beatdown applied with a massively generalizing brush to an entire group that he wants to view in an untenably paranoid conspiratorial lens.
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airmanfour
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quote:
Originally posted by Stephan:
quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
\
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he calls them the Leftaliban.

Better than Lazis, or Left Qaeda.
If you substitute the translation for the reactionary label it makes much more sense.
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Tinros
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See, when I was in high school, 12th grade history was actually American Government, and it was required for graduation. We went through all of that "Constitution" stuff that he seems to think is left out, and in great detail. I'll tell you what we never covered in any of my history classes: anything after WWI. Seriously. We never went over WWII, Vietnam, any of that. And WWI was only the general idea of "there was a war, and a lot of people were involved, and a lot of people died, and we won." I was seriously disappointed. However, every single history class I had, starting in elementary and going until my senior year of high school, went over every battle of the Revolutionary and Civil wars they could fit. Names, dates, places--but no modern relevance.
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steven
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quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
[QUOTE]froth-mouthed massive strawman beatdown

This phrase entertains me. It's so evocative. I can see the beating of the strawmen. I imagine bodyslams and other pro-wrestling moves plus the use of foreign objects like metal folding chairs.

[ROFL]

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rivka
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quote:
Originally posted by Tinros:
See, when I was in high school, 12th grade history was actually American Government, and it was required for graduation. We went through all of that "Constitution" stuff that he seems to think is left out, and in great detail.

Ditto.

What state did you go to HS in?

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Samprimary
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Went to CO here, civics and government was crammed into our heads ceaselessly during 12th grade.

History generally took a yearly tiered format. Timeframes by year, then larger-scale Western and World History.

Our district was not lacking in a complete portrayal of history.

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Lyrhawn
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We got American government as a one semester class in ninth grade, followed by a semester of economics. Then we got a year of US history. Junior year was AP History, then senior year I had world history.
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Christine
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We had a semester of geography and one of government (American and state constitution tests) in 9th grade, world history in 10th, and American history in 11th. I opted for a year of AP European History in 12th and a semester of law, which was a very good course even if it took me out of my usual honors peer group.

High school is only 4 years. I think our real failing in teaching history is in the 8 years before that. EIGHT years they had to get us interested in and excited about a wide range of history topics and what did we learn, year after year? America: Christopher Columbus to George Washington.

I'm actually bitter about this. In a year and a half my first child starts school and I'm hoping it's better for him. If not, I'm going to try to find some interesting history/civics lessons for kids to do in the summer.

One thing I've already noticed: When I watch the news, my 4-year-old son wants to know what's going on. I find that encouraging.

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Stephan
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I taught the Eastern Hemisphere for two years to 7th graders. Loved every minute of it. 10,000 BC to the present in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Religion, culture, politics, history, all of it. I even covered Vietnam and World War II. At the beginning of this year they moved me to 8th grade US history 1776 - reconstruction. I had no idea how I was going to go from teching 12,000 years of history on four continents to 100 years of history in one country. I ran to an open technology position in October.
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Mucus
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quote:
Originally posted by Christine:
... is in the 8 years before that. EIGHT years they had to get us interested in and excited about a wide range of history topics and what did we learn, year after year? America: Christopher Columbus to George Washington.

We have the same problem. Years of boring Canadian history, very small glimpses of the scope and interest of European and Asian history. If it wasn't for reading at home and electives in high school, I'd probably hate history.
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0Megabyte
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I love history.

And history classes from when I was a little kid were boring as heck. Define 30 people and terms by tomorrow? Gah, what a drag...

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Hobbes
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I feel like somewhere here is a great joke about school history and West Carlonia but I can't get a handle on it.

Hobbes [Smile]

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xtownaga
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I graduated from HS in New Jersey in 2005. We had a year of wold history in 9th grade, two full years of US history, and a year where we could take some electives in social sciences or AP Euro (10th grade was pretty much the colonies through reconstruction, 11th was the 20th century, taught as a semester that went through the entire century looking at foreign affairs (mostly wars, but we got some other stuff in there too), and a second semester that focused primarily on domestic issues (including culture as it changed over the decades)).

We got a good chunk of civics / government over the course of this. I was amazed when I got to college at how little most of my classmates knew about history (even the ones who had taken AP when I'd been in regular classes for history). It's worth noting that I went to college in NC, and pretty close to where OSC lives at that. Many of the people I met and was amazed at their lacking knowledge of history came out of the public school system that OSC is ranting so heavily about attempts to reform. From everything I saw, there is pretty significant room for improvement to that system.

Now to be clear, I don't have any first hand experience with the schools down there. I'm just judging from the results I saw. But considering a lot of these students were in the upper parts of their graduating classes, I feel pretty confident saying at least a large part of this is material just not being covered rather than students ignoring/forgetting it.

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steven
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quote:
Originally posted by xtownaga:
I graduated from HS in New Jersey in 2005. We had a year of wold history in 9th grade, two full years of US history, and a year where we could take some electives in social sciences or AP Euro (10th grade was pretty much the colonies through reconstruction, 11th was the 20th century, taught as a semester that went through the entire century looking at foreign affairs (mostly wars, but we got some other stuff in there too), and a second semester that focused primarily on domestic issues (including culture as it changed over the decades)).

We got a good chunk of civics / government over the course of this. I was amazed when I got to college at how little most of my classmates knew about history (even the ones who had taken AP when I'd been in regular classes for history). It's worth noting that I went to college in NC, and pretty close to where OSC lives at that. Many of the people I met and was amazed at their lacking knowledge of history came out of the public school system that OSC is ranting so heavily about attempts to reform. From everything I saw, there is pretty significant room for improvement to that system.

Now to be clear, I don't have any first hand experience with the schools down there. I'm just judging from the results I saw. But considering a lot of these students were in the upper parts of their graduating classes, I feel pretty confident saying at least a large part of this is material just not being covered rather than students ignoring/forgetting it.

Thanks for that. It's nice for me to know my place in the world.
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Stephan
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quote:
Originally posted by xtownaga:
I graduated from HS in New Jersey in 2005. We had a year of wold history in 9th grade, two full years of US history, and a year where we could take some electives in social sciences or AP Euro (10th grade was pretty much the colonies through reconstruction, 11th was the 20th century, taught as a semester that went through the entire century looking at foreign affairs (mostly wars, but we got some other stuff in there too), and a second semester that focused primarily on domestic issues (including culture as it changed over the decades)).

We got a good chunk of civics / government over the course of this. I was amazed when I got to college at how little most of my classmates knew about history (even the ones who had taken AP when I'd been in regular classes for history). It's worth noting that I went to college in NC, and pretty close to where OSC lives at that. Many of the people I met and was amazed at their lacking knowledge of history came out of the public school system that OSC is ranting so heavily about attempts to reform. From everything I saw, there is pretty significant room for improvement to that system.

Now to be clear, I don't have any first hand experience with the schools down there. I'm just judging from the results I saw. But considering a lot of these students were in the upper parts of their graduating classes, I feel pretty confident saying at least a large part of this is material just not being covered rather than students ignoring/forgetting it.

Now, even if you are right, that is not what OSC seems to be saying. If his article was on education reforms in general, and ideas he had on how to fix it, fine. He blatantly either lies or believed someone else's lie. He states clearly that pre-1877 is being removed from the state history curriculum. That is just frankly not true. If anything, these changes might help with the problems you addressed.
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Tinros
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I'm in Ohio. My high school had a very AP-driven program, so AP History was an option junior year and AP Government senior year. I just took the regular history and government classes, and I actually took my government class the summer BEFORE my senior year (4 hour a day, for about 10 weeks), so I could take a couple elective music classes during the year.
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