American History

from independent reading outside of school than I ever had in high school. I avoided history in college except for 2 classes. My anthro minor courses counted as equivalent social studies credits.

Our high school history classes alternated between American history one year and "world" history the next, from 7th grade through 11th. Grade 12 was civics.

"World history" was almost exclusively about Europe, except for brief mention of ancient civilizations in China, India, and the Middle East.

My 11th grade American history teacher was awful. He spent the entire year talking about his kids and his family's vacations. At the end of each class period, when he realized that we had covered no history, he assigned us lists of dates or people to memorize. When he told us to memorize the names of US presidents in order, I rebelled and asked what good it was without knowing what they did, what they were known for, what was happening in the country at the time.

His answer was, "Everything you learn makes your brain work. You gotta exercise your brain because it's a muscle that gets lax without use." I snapped back that the brain is not a muscle. It's a network of nerve cells that should process information and not just be used for storage like a file cabinet. He said that I was out of line and threatened me with detention or a trip to the counselor's office.

A friend said that my outburst had embarrassed her. I said that the teacher was an embarrassment.



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