Do Americans learn European history?

I’d say that half of our history classes are American History and the other half are World History. Now, I know this question refers to specifically European History, but I feel that I need to expand it a bit in order to express how much we end up learning in school. As others have mentioned, this varies from State to State, so while I may have learned about Mesopotamia another school might not even recognize the name. Another important thing to note is that I didn’t really start to become interested in history until the 8th Grade, so I won’t be able to go into as much detail before that point because I wasn’t paying as much attention.

I feel that Elementary School isn’t even worth mentioning, as they only lightly touch each subject and the kids are probably too young to even understand what’s happening anyways, so I’ll skip directly to Middle School.

6th Grade covered human evolution up to the Renaissance Period. I don’t know if European schools or even other American schools teach this in their history classes, but mine taught the Evolution of Humans as the first unit. Anyways, after that was Mesopotamia, and then we went on to learn about the Indus River Valley Civilization, Ancient China, Ancient Greece, The Romans, The Crusades, and the Plague, eventually ending with the aforementioned Renaissance. There might’ve been a bit more, but as stated before I wasn’t as interested in history so that’s all I remember.

7th Grade picked up where 6th Grade left off and continued all the way to Modern History. I don’t remember exactly what it started with, but I do recall learning about both World Wars, Ancient philosophers such as John Locke(He’s the only one that I remember), and The Cold War. We even learned about smaller things such as the Student Protests in China going on in the 80’s, as well as European Colonization of Africa, their treatment of the Natives(As well as Britain’s treatment of the Indians), and then the post-colonization period where there was constant War, Chaos, and Genocides. This was actually the first time I ever learned about World War 1 in-depth. I didn’t notice this at the time, but looking back on it this year was surprisingly in-depth.

In 8th Grade we went over American and North Carolinian History. Trust me, NC history is just as boring as it sounds. I actually had high hopes going into this, as I love learning about American History, but I was severely disappointed. We didn’t get out of the 1700’s until February(Over halfway through the year), we never learned about the Spanish-American War, the closest we ever got to the Mexican War was a story about Davy Crockett during the Battle of the Alamo, and once we reached the 20th century all the major events were covered in Two-Day Units. That’s right, the biggest events in America’s history were skimmed right over. This includes World War 1, World War 2, and the Cold War. Vietnam and Korea were only footnotes for The Cold War. All in all, it was pretty bad. We had full Units on The Revolutionary War, The War of 1812(Although it didn’t talk about the war itself moreover the Embargo that was placed as a result of impressment and how bad it was for American Industry), The Gold Rush, The Civil War, Reformation Period, and then our last real Unit was on the Industrial Revolution. After that was the aforementioned 2-Day Units.

Because I’m currently in 9th Grade I can’t give a complete answer for this, but I’ll do what I can. Our first Unit covered Early Civilizations. Specifically, Mesopotamia, Egypt, The Indus River Valley Civilization, and China. We went over things about them such as Religion, Language, Location, etc. After that, we moved on to Ancient Greece. This includes the Peloponnesian War, The Trojan War, and then Alexander The Great. We then moved onto Rome, which had its rise, its Empire, and then its Fall. Then came monotheistic religions, those being Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Then were the Middle Ages, where we learned about Charlemagne, The Crusades, and the Magna Carta. And finally, we just finished up the Renaissance. Now, I don’t know for sure what we’re going to learn in the future but from reading the syllabus it looks like it includes The Enlightenment, The Napoleonic Wars, The World Wars, The Cold War, and then Modern History. Modern History sounds pretty vague, but I’m guessing it’s going to include The Persian Gulf War, The War on Terror, and possibly the Yugoslav Wars. I’ll try to update this as the year goes on.Anyways, I hoped my answer helped to any foreigners who were wondering.