Modern History is not history?

What you're experiencing is the consequence of contemporary politics. Political leaders want schools to make students more 'engaged' in social issues. They believe that ancient and medieval history is too old, too boring, and too irrelevent for students today and for contemporary issues. Thus, many of them have bought into the notion that school curriculum needs to focus mostly on 'modern history' because it is more important than older history. Many reformers who accept this argument come from the political left -- and they often feel that continuing to emphasize history before, say, the late 1700s is Eurocentric and reinforces white racism. By focusing mostly on the past two centuries, and especially history since 1945, there will be less attention given to white-racist 'Western' history and more time focusing on global multiculturalism, liberation movements, and globalization.

This political movement has been occurring in Sweden, Britain, Australia, and to a lesser extent the United States.

Yes, its annoying that they concentrate so much on wars, but wars helped shape the world we have today. Every time a war happens, technology gets a boost. Not only new ways to kill people, but new food preservation techniques and medical innovations. Most of that is pretty boring, too, since you can't learn about the people who lived in those times. All they have time for in class is to touch the high points. They probably mention Apollo 11, the one that landed on the moon first, but you probably don't hear about Apollo 13 which suffered a major failure and had to come back without touching the moon. Watch the movie Apollo 13 to find out what happened.

The space shuttle program is another item that's been reduced to a couple of paragraphs. For those of use who lived through it, we know it didn't come without cost.

Have they taught you about 9-11? The kids born on that day are now 13 years old and can never comprehend the shock of the world (not just the USA) when it happened. Imagine the terror of a 20-year-old woman in Morocco when she walked by a bank of televisions and saw the World Trade Center on fire and the words "America Attacked" in English and nothing else. Everything else was in Arabic. She was in an Arabian country with a fellow American and for all she knew World War III had started. She did find someone who spoke English and they helped her get back to Europe (all flights were grounded), but THAT is the history they do not teach.

Well this makes a change from the kids who think anything beyond their memory is Ancient History.

I do think it is important that we learn some of the earlier history which forms some of the background to our present age but many of the most important events which formed our present age fall within the last 100 years. It would be sad if children left school knowing all about the Tudors to Victorians, but not about the two world wars, the Cold War, the creation of the EU, and the Fall of Communism, as well as something about decolonisation and the Chinese Revolution. These events should be part of what informs us as citizens when choosing our politicians. You need to understand something about why Israel was founded, and why the Arab nations dislike the West. You should know something about the creation of Pakistan, or what makes India ambivalent towards Britain. Can we understand our present age without understanding the Rise of the USA, or what the impact of Soviet Rule was on our allies in eastern Europe? Even as someone who lived through some of this it is sometimes frightening to discover how much was hidden from us at the time.

It certainly should not all be about wars, political history is important, but you should also be studying social and economic history. As someone who can remember the slumps of an earlier period of British history I'm conscious of patterns repeating themselves, just as I am amused to see fashions of my youth recycled in the shops. You need to know what life was like before the recent technological revolution before you can understand the degree of discontinuity between pre-1960 and today.

You are COMPLETELY right about this. History is a "serial story", and nothing "just happens", the events in each "instalment" being the consequences of ones earlier on, and the causes of those in later ones. Without that "continuity of knowledge" it's quite impossible to understand any period or event properly, and what is not understandable inevitably tends to be "boring". Yet properly undertaken as a "serial", History is THE most fascinating subject to study.

Your situation is not new - "teaching to the exam" was prevalent in the 1930s, but at least we had had some "background" before "doing" the 16th. and 17th. Centuries in detail. And those two Centuries, properly UNDERSTOOD are still the most "relevant" to the present-day world.

And, like you, I would say that "History" is "beyond living memory", anything nearer than that being "Current Affairs".

The present Education Secretary, Michael Gove, agrees with both of us, and wishes to get it taught as a serial story, but is unlikly to succeed in this because there just aren't the teachers capable of doing this.

The answer for you, as it was for me, is to make the learning and understanding of History a fascinating and life-long hobby rather than a "subject" . And DON'T do it at University - there, you simply do "more and more about less and less".

Tomorrow,today will be history,if you like history before the victorians then just look it up and educate yourself,children today are really ignorant about history,there was a report published recently which said that some children think that delia smith was one of Henry VIII's wives,along with jerry hall! some teenagers could not even name the 2 countries that were involved in the second world war,it gets worse,some of those questioned thought that nick knowles built the pyramids,and that william shakespeare was head of the bbc! and some teens thought that bruce forsyth,alan sugar and rod stewart had been british prime ministers, unbelievable,so please educate yourself,don't be ignorant. By the way in geography a third of those teens did not know that london was in the south east of the country.

Yesterday is history, however I tend to agree with you, there is too much focus on modern history. A study of the decline of the Roman Empire resonates today in the mistakes being made by our political masters, and the greed of large corporations. The Ancient Greeks began a form of democracy; the Ancient Egyptians were great architects and builders; the Arabs were great mathematicians and formulators of forward thinking medicine, and the Chinese invented paper money, gunpowder, and excelled in poetry. It doesn't have to be all about war and conflict. I suggest you google times you think you are interested in, and study books from your local library, it can be very rewarding.

Modern history is definitely history, it effects us directly and is generally the result of Victorian Britain and it should be taught in school otherwise you get complete dumbass' who don't know what WW1 is or think that all Germans are Nazi's

Different places teach different history periods so look around :)

My school's sixth form only do modern history, but my friend's school give them the option to do Tudor history or modem history

History happens within living memory - I was born in 1941 and have childhood memories of WW2. My mother who worked in a factory during the war years making bombs, had first hand experience of that era as a grown up. I grew up in the 1950's - this is something of what we were all mad about back then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR2wfLyT-b0

The two guys who wrote the above can be seen dancing in from the left - one fat guy and another not fat. Elvis thought they were a real hoot.

And Elvis never took a dancing lesson in his entire life - just a natural.

Meanwhile in my misbegotten teen years here in UK - we got this from Cliff and the Shads.

http://www.trilulilu.ro/video-vedete/cliff-richard...

But what we really wanted was this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bB5xL577r4

The above of Jerry Lee Lewis is probably c1980s looks like one of his Paris gigs. The French are nuts for Rock n Roll.

Now here's he King of Guitar - Chuck Berry - just watch the girl bounding up and down on her boyfriends lap - phew bubba!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEq62iQo0eU

Well, that's just a bit of my history. But if you wanna go way back - why stop there?

The best movies ever made are all British - don't believe all that crap about Hollywood. No sir.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwTBKuRzYd4

I've spent a lot of time looking at the 1950s and the reason why is because everything we do today, in spite of what people may think, is directly related to that period of our history - it made us what we have become - yes, TV and all the rest.

But by car the biggest event back then was this.

It's in black and white because that's how we saw it on TV back in 1953

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzahB7sHYSU

The above documentary explains in great detail just how organised we British are - don't be fooled by all that crap about German efficiency, you wanna see the British.

Yeah and we done the best Olympic Games ever and we even made a monster raving profit too.

And finally, remember this, that all of us here in UK, you me, the whole mob, see ourselves as part of that great and glorious victory which happened in 1945 after years and years of war at the end of which we were exhausted.

Even though you were not born then - "This is your Victory" It is our history as a people - mad, self deprecating, self appointed critics of everything, and a bunch of tribes who cannot agree on anything, yet somehow manage to agree to disagree - most of the time anyway.

VE Day London - the people went wild.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AC2vzAA5N8

London UK 210313.2334

They don't teach real history anymore because they don't want an informed, intellectual population. As for wars, learn the wars and everything falls into place.