Thanks for ressurecting this, Tree. I kinna had a few things I wanted to say, too.
First off, anything you learn from Kindergarten through 6th grade is, as a rule, worthless, unless it is math, spelling/grammar, or how to read. There are, of course a few exceptions, but they're far between. The same mostly applies to 7th and 8th grades as well, but there's a small amount more worth by then. The real learning doesn't start until high school.
As to the topic, I only had two history classes that had anything to do with the US. The first, which has already been mentioned by Tree, was the aptly named AP US History. I don't remember much from this class, as, at the time, I was almost fed up with school, but I do remember that it treated america harshly, and that we spent an entire week learning about the Kennedy assassination.
The other class was Modern World History, which, in contrast with it's name, was really about the Cold War. As such, it wasn't entirely about the US, but the US had a large part. Also in contrast, but this time to the AP class, this class was very fair in its treatment of the US. Part of this is because it was an essay-based "Choose your own viewpoint" course, where we spent a lot of time learning about the history from supposedly unbiased sources, then making our decisions about the morality behind the scenes.
There were, of course, two flaws with this. One; the writers we read were not unbiased, and, even though we were suppposed to make note of this in our papers, it held sway over our opinions. Two; there were often only two camps to belong to on any one issue, and as such we often had to conform to one of those two sides, even in light of evidence to the contrary. Even so, this course in general was much more supportive of the US in general than the actual course about the US itself. The last history course that I took at high school was European and, as such, had no content on the US, but, due to it's nature being similar to Modern World, was as supportive of the countries it did cover as Modern World was of the US.
It should be noted, however, that those two courses, Modern World, and European, were international standard courses. (IB, for those who know of it. I'm sure there're a few.) The curriculum was chosen by a panel of teachers from around the globe, and I theoretically learned exactly the same material as, say, someone who took the same course in Botswana (a randomly picked country).
It's interesting to say that a course designed by a group of countries gave a curruculum about the US that was far more supportive of the US than the course about the US that the US itself designed.
_________________ Go then. There are other worlds than these.
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