Anyone who has been around me on days beginning in “T” has probably heard me bemoaning the fact that I am in Western Civilization this semester. While I probably should get over it—after all, it’s only April—I do find it somewhat remarkable that I managed to spend an entire term in Florence and still need credit for history of the western world. Fortunately, I enjoy history more than other subjects, such as any of the sciences, so Western Civ. is not nearly as terrible as I make it out to be. I henceforth resolve to get over it for the rest of this semester.

As this class will likely be one my last courses in history, with the exception of music history, I have taken some time to ponder what history has looked like throughout my educational experience:

I have few consistent education memories until around second or third grade, so there is no telling exactly what history was being pushed into my fertile kindergarten brain. However, if I were a gambling man, I would guess that the first few years of primary school were very similar to the rest: American colonization, Revolution, and Civil War.

Now, there is nothing wrong with studying the incredibly significant events of the United States, but I now realize how narrow a historical perspective I was provided for the first, say, seven years of education. After all, the US has only been around a fraction of the entire span of Western civilization. World War II got some airtime as junior high approached [only so we could understand what The Diary of Anne Frank is about], but elementary history education was, by and large, very ethnocentric. [However, I did managed to escape from ever taking a course in Arkansas History, which I simply cannot fathom.]

The neat aspect of history is that, unlike many other fields of study, more material is generated with every passing day. However, this makes the challenge of teaching history even greater, because as new relevant events arise, most likely some old ones will be pushed to the periphery and possibly lost. I don’t suspect that George Washington will go by the wayside in American education anytime soon, but I would like to see some additions and changes in the American view of history.

Until the ninth grade, I thought the Cold War was a literal war fought in Russia. [After all, it's cold in Russia, right?] Until twelfth grade, I had no idea what the term “apartheid” referred to. I could not differentiate between the first and second World War until the tenth grade, and I could not tell you a single event that happened between the two. Upon my graduation from high school, I highly doubt that I could explain to you what the Holy Roman Empire was, nor could I acceptably talk about the French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte.

Thankfully, things have changed since. As much as I complain about Western Civ., I have a healthy appreciation for history these days and I feel adequately equipped to embark into the world. However, had my motivation been any less along the way, I would not nearly so well-equipped; if teachers have only so much time to emphasize certain aspects of history, I would love to see kids understanding the Cold War ahead of memorizing all fifty US state capitals, if for nothing more than to make Western Civ. more enjoyable one day.