[G. Adams]

I personally feel that up to 14 they should stick to interesting history. Subjective I know, but who wouldn't pick the Aztecs and Conquistadors over the Industrial Revolution? Its not like they teach you about the good bits of the industrial revolution, like Europe tearing itself apart over the new politics released and enabled by the French revolution, combined with new techs. No, it was god damned trains and the spinning jenny. WHO CARES?

If anything will turn kids away from history it the fact that they know every time they get in that room they are gonna be bored to death. But if you get them interested in history early on then later they will appreciate history more, and will put up with the boring bits because they'll see it as part of a bigger, more interesting package.

Have to say though that my british state education in history was pretty good, (apart from industrial revolution) but I was lucky to continually get good teachers. And we didn't do our topics as small as you were saying, months at a time. In first year secondary school, we did a year of classical history, mainly rome mind. Next year it was a year of british medieval history, from norman conquest to war of the roses, third year it was half tudors then industrial revolution. Fourth year I took history as an option so got extra classes, we did world history from 1912 to 1939, fifth year was world history from 1939-1975, with coursework on Vietnam 55-75.

I say it was pretty good, but its astounding how much extra I've learned about the same topics since then, and I havn't even studied it since.