Really? That's interesting and surprising, actually.

For us here in the US, we have history all the way through 12th grade. You have choices in what you can take, and you can double up to complete requirements quicker, some years it was Civics/government/economics (which by necessity, include history)...but we had it every year.

What always chapped my ass was that every damn year was the same material. I'm shocked so many American kids are ueless about the basics of American history. I can't understand how that happens other than being completely and totally checked out, just because of the repetition.

Every year, it's Mesopotamia and "prehistory", Egypt, wasn't Greek and Roman antiquity swell?, Spanish Conquistadors, Dark Ages, in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, Colonies, King George was a jackass, Boston Tea Party, Declaration of Independence, Revolutionary war, our George is way better than your George; maybe he should be king, you know, that George really was a nice guy; thinking of the little people and turning down a crown, Articles of Confederation, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Jefferson, Louisiana Purchase, manifest destiny Andrew Jackson shot a dude on the Senate floor, bunch of filler stuff, Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Reconstruction, WWI, Depression, compare and contrast the Roosevelts, let's take a hot minute to see what those crazy Europeans are doing...oh, here we go again, WWII, Marshall Plan, brief mention about civil rights, and okay kiddos, we've run out of time for the year but let's briefly hit some highlights on Korea and Vietnam, neither of which, it shoud be noted, were actual wars.

America is not the war mongering nation it gets falsely accused of being. We've only been to war 5 times in our entire history. Korea was a police action and Vietnam was an unfortunate conflict because of communism. Obviously.

Here's your diploma.

I got my diploma well before Iraq/Kuwait and the others, so I've got no idea how they're spinning those in schools.

But you know...then you get out of school and get time to read more of what you want to read, you're making your own money so you can afford to buy your own books and stuff, the internet comes along and it turns out a lot of people are interested in history or were actually there during the making of it, and all that's cool and stuff. One day you realize history doesn't automatically inspire you to gouge your own eyeballs out with a pickle fork to reduce the agony of the subject any more. Sometimes later, you're surprised to find out that what you had in school was sort of one sided, superficial, all the things and you think, "that was rude".

You'll either care enough to rectify that situation or not.

But how do you get through 12 years of history and not be able to place the states? How the hell does that happen?

Those kids must have duct taped their eyeballs during history class or something. It's the only explanation.