[mook]

I think that, in my twelve years of education, I haven't once taken a mandatory history class that taught me anything past World War II. Well, I'll take that back--in the eighth grade, we touched on the assasination of John F. Kennedy before the semester's end. But in general, my history classes seem to drag through months of studying imperialism, months of looking at the American Revolution, months of westernization, months of World War I.. followed by two weeks of rushing through World War II before the semester ends. It's pure idiocy. I have learned about the Battle of Bunker Hill 12 times. I have hardly even scratched the surface of what went on during Vietnam (though I've read up a little on it independently). The entire history curriculum is terribly flawed. I know this for a few reasons:

First and foremost, when schools do not educate people about recent history, people are bound to be ignorant of what helped form the modern world. When students rarely get past the end of WWII, obviously no one will know about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the times of massive change that took place during the Reagan administration, the Iran/Iraq war, the rise of Palestinian terrorism in Israel (or Israel's wars before that), the Korean War, or virtually anything else. Sure, it's important to educate kids about the American Revolution, but certainly not to teach it 12 times at the sacrifice of teaching them the issues that helped shape the face of the modern world more than anything that happened that long ago.

Next, teaching students about more recent history will increase the likelihood of actually getting them to care about the history classes they are in. Let's face it: Everything prior to 1900 is boring. It's essential knowledge, certainly, but it is not material that students can easily relate to or grasp onto. Teaching more recent events will most certailny allow the students to relate better; they could relate the content to modern current events, and additionally have a better grasp on the material because their parents probably lived through all of it.

I don't know if this is true everywhere, but for myself and my peers it certainly has been. I've been in three different school systems over the course of my life and this is always how the history classes are managed. Surely something's wrong when no one I know has even the tiniest bit of knowledge about the country we just sent members of our military into two years ago.

I don't know if any of you will agree or not. I wish I could find some sort of poll proving my point, but I don't know if there's anything like that out there. If there is something out there of the sort, tell me, I might write a speech on it or something. Because it drives me crazy.