From: evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com   
      
   On 10/2/25 11:49 AM, Paul Dormer wrote:   
   > In article <10bjsai$h48j$1@dont-email.me>, evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com   
   > (Evelyn C. Leeper) wrote:   
   >   
   >>   
   >> I am reminded of a friend who was explaining why he didn't know   
   >> something one would learn in a world history course (maybe about the   
   >> Protestant Reformation or something), and said it was because he went   
   >> to a trade school. When asked what school it was, he said, "MIT."   
   >   
   > Now, that's the sort of thing you'd learn in secondary school in the UK.   
   > Ancient Egypt, Greece, Roman empire etc.  Then a gap for the Dark Ages   
   > and history really started with the Norman conquest.  I don't remember   
   > much of what was taught about the War of the Roses and the Civil Wars.   
   > Then glories of the British Empire, the minor kerfuffle involving the   
   > American colonies.  But because of my accelerated stream, we then jumped   
   > to European history, 1870-1939.   
      
   When I was in secondary school, the students in the "college track" had   
   to take World History, but the students in the "scientific track" did   
   not. (We had plenty of things we had to take that they didn't.) Not sure   
   what it covered. The US History course (which everyone had to take)   
   never managed to get past the Spanish-American War.   
      
   And no one can remember what was taught about the Wars of the Roses. :-)   
   (For example, that it is the *Wars* of the Roses; the *War* of the Roses   
   was a film with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.)   
      
   As I wrote in my review of Dan Jones's THE PLANTAGENETS:   
      
   "And there are so many defections and deceptions that keeping track   
   of who is on which side almost requires a scorecard.  As Josephine   
   Tey has her narrator in THE DAUGHTER OF TIME say, 'Every schoolboy   
   turned over the final page of Richard III with relief, because now   
   at last the Wars of the Roses were over and they could get on to   
   the Tudors, who were dull but easy to follow.'"   
      
   I'm pretty sure that my current knowledge of world history would match   
   anyone in my secondary school who actually took the course, because I've   
   been reading history books and watching historical films for the last   
   fifty years (and constantly sending in Goofs to the IMDb about the   
   films, so yes, I realize one doesn't learn history from them--one is   
   driven to go read the actual history and then yell at the screen).   
      
   And as I observed on another list just recently, when I was in secondary   
   school, girls took home economics their sophomore year, and boys took   
   shop. But because I was taking Algebra II in addition to geometry (and   
   drafting), they couldn't manage to fit the home economics course in, so   
   I was the only girl who never took home economics. Senior year all the   
   girls took the Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow test. Guess who came   
   in first.   
      
   (I just bought ten Great Courses history courses at a used bookstore,   
   mostly for $5 each, and am currently bingeing "The Foundations of   
   Western Civilization". Even in this the professor makes at least one   
   mistake; he claims Sophocles's "Oedipus" trilogy is the only Greek   
   trilogy to survive, completely forgetting about Aeschylus's "Oresteia".)   
      
      
   --   
   Evelyn C. Leeper, http://leepers.us/evelyn   
   Don't ever save anything for a special occasion.   
   Every day you're alive is a special occasion. -Ann Wells   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)