Do you learn more about very recent history in high school or college?

N918KT

N918KT

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It seems that when I was in high school, I never learned about very recent history (like within the last 5 years). We were learning more about what happened back a long time ago such as the Civil War, or WWI and WWII. I did remember taking a contemporary history course in high school although it was not as recent as the events of 9/11 or the economic recession in 2008-2009. At most it got up to the 1980's or early 1990's, if I remember correctly.

Now I'm in my final semester of college, I remember learning about the economic collapse of 2008-2009 (since at the time I was getting an associates degree in business) and also 9/11 and very recent history in aviation (since I am currently majoring in aviation administration).

I think it is when you get to college you learn about events that happened within the last 5 years or so.

Anyone agree with me?
 
Kind of depends on the course and context. If you're taking a history class, then by definition, the events are "old." I wouldn't expect 5 year old events to be discussed in a history class. Not even ten year old events unless they are hugely significant. In a math or science class, I would expect recent relevant events to be discussed.
 
History "facts" cannot be put into meaningful context until about 50 years after the events. Imagine a biography written of say, Obama as soon as he leaves office compared to one that will be written 50 years later. (Or any other well-known person or event.)

It seems I get most of my recent history info from teen challenge Jeopardy.
 
High school is great in explaining the past. Depends on the course you take in college ,wether you get current history or world politics,or deal in the past.
 
I seem to recall (remember, high school was many decades ago) that current events certainly shaped how history was discussed in class. Somehow Vietnam worked its way into many discussions that had nothing to do with it. But, that was then...
 
Ghery said:
I seem to recall (remember, high school was many decades ago) that current events certainly shaped how history was discussed in class. Somehow Vietnam worked its way into many discussions that had nothing to do with it. But, that was then...
Click to expand...

High school was always good for getting an opinion from a lot of teachers,who are mostly ultra liberals.
 
When I was in high school, the history classes were the typical US history from the earliest colonists up to the Viet Nam war and Texas history from the earliest explorers until the Civil War, and there was not much anything more recent than that. But, for an elective class we got Russian history from around 1500 all the way thru until Brezhnev, who was still in power at the time, and since the Cold War was still going full on this class was the most popular amongst the students. Of course, many redneck parents at the time were aghast that the history of "them Russian commies" was being "forced upon their kids" in their school, but from the perspective of us kids, we were learning what "made our enemy tick" and it was fascinating.

Believe it or not, the last history class I had in college was primarily about the rise, domination over much of the world's affairs, and fall of the Habsburg Empire (1500's to 1918).

This college history class was simply called "History of Western Civilization" and was required as the core history undergrad class for all us science majors... apparently some university committee thought that the Habsburgs/Holy Roman Empire and history of continental Europe had the greatest weight on influencing and shaping what the world was getting set up to become politically in the 20th century more than anything else, even than the British, French or Dutch empires, and thus this was the history course mandated for us. That history sure explained a lot of the background that ultimately led up to WWI and WWII, and it's rather curious that few educated people these days have ever even heard of the Habsburgs/HRE or know what that was.
 
The american history II class I took last semester went all the way up to what Obama did in his first term.

I think it largely depends on the textbook
 
High School.

College was for engineering studies.
 
Nope. We had lots of discussions in high school civics about Iran/Contra, and it was current at the time. Great teachable moment about constitutional crises and how they aren't rare.
 
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