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SvennoJ on 14 January 2021
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Majora said:

Wales, UK.

As another UK poster mentioned, someone had a massive boner for WW2 and that was when I zoned out. I just didn’t find it that interesting. I’ve always been more fascinated with ancient history and not necessarily of my country though so that’s probably why. Nothing in school was said about colonialism, the UK was neither glorified nor vilified, what was taught was accurate but they picked very specific time periods/events and that’s understandable as there’s only so much time, and to truly understand a topic it has to be concentrated on.

Strangely enough, being Welsh and in Wales, the English were never villainised and we were never taught about the what happened between the English and the Welsh, apart from what happened during the Tudor period. When we were taught about the Roman invasion (and the Scandinavian invasion) those peoples were not vilified either, it was just taught as fact. I like this style of teaching; facts and truth are important and an individual can decide for themselves how they feel about the events. I don’t want my history with side servings of “muh feelings”.

In summary, not everything was taught (impossible task for two hours a week history lesson) but what was taught was less emotion based and simply stated facts. Interestingly enough, when I returned to education in 2019, the history class was much more biased, incorporated feelings and encouraged “how it makes you feel” or “put yourself in the shoes of x, y or z” and overall had a gloomier slant. I did not enjoy this style of being taught. So I went away and read books instead.

It all depends on the teacher you get. I got more fact based and balanced 'history' from social studies than from history class. When the cold war was ending, while everyone's attention was on the first Gulf war, my social studies teacher pointed out what was going on in the USSR at the time. History as it was developing.

Ancient history was also fact based, persians, greeks, romans, monguls, bit of china, arabia, the origins of math and language. Medieval times was still pretty much the same although clearly just focusing on western Europe. Different teachers for the later periods and more opinion and 'pick and choose' history the closer it got to present times. It got so bad in the final year that my history teacher was openly promoting one political party over the others while teaching political history of the early 20th century.

On the other hand I went to a Christian school that taught Evolution theory completely opinion free with a lot of focus on Darwin, while also teaching creation. However the latter was presented as the creation story, as it was written in the bible. Same with many other things from the bible, discussed as stories, never any hint of fact. They also taught us about Islam, opinion free and also other religions. Discussing differences, yet never favoring one over the other. Religion class was more fact based than history class.

In the end, teachers are all humans, humans are all different. No two classes are taught the same, it all depends on the teachers you get. I have great memories and respect for my social studios and religion class teachers (as well as many others). History isn't among the list though. I can't remember hardly anything about the 'better' ones, just a couple things about the one pushing political views.