Iluvbertie
Imperial Majesty
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2004
- Messages
- 14,480
- City
- Bathurst
- Country
- Australia
Well, I don't know about Australia and Great Britain, but here in the US, history doesn't seem to be taught until high school-if then. When I was in grade school, many many years ago, we knew the states, their capitals, the presidents, the three branches of government, not to mention the kings and queens of England and a few other countries. I guess those days are gone forever unless you home school the kids. It's very sad, because history is such an important subject. Part of the problem is probably that it is not made interesting- just memorizing dates really doesn't do it and really there are only about 15 dates that are really needed to be learned- events that changed the world= you know, 1066, 1215, 1453, 1492, 1776 and a few more. History can be made interesting- but here in this country, it is too often taught by foot ball coaches- who could care less.
As a modern day history teacher (not a football coach mind you) I can't remember the last time I insisted kids learn a date - other than our Year 9 course where I do think there are two dates they should know - 1st January 1901 and 25th April 1915. As for the other dates you mentioned - don't teach any of them because we don't teach European or American history at my school except for The Vikings.
That is the problem. In the late 70s to early 80s they focus of history changed from The Story of Man to inquiry based focus on specific units so you have 25 hours of study of The Vikings and then 25 hours of study of the impact of colonisation (emphasising the negatives of European colonisation) and that is Year 8 history. The consequence is a lot of information on one topic but no broad knowledge of anything.
We seem to spend more time training mini-historians then teaching the 'what happened side of history'.
But back to the Olympics - I remember when knowing the different cities was actually taught e.g. 1968 my teacher had us do some research - had to use books and all that stuff - on the previous Olympics and I drew the 1936 Games. I think we all had a lot of fun with that and the presentations were up around the room for the week or so leading up to the games in Mexico and continued throughout the games as well as the week afterwards.
Maybe that is when my interest in the Olympics began.