How much Russian history did you learn in school?

[pookiepie]

this happened in sophmore or junior year. i think she was just ignorant. she didn't have to go into a discussion about sex, we were just listing names.

[Romanov_fan]

I will approach this from a slightly different point of view. I taught world history to sixth graders for thirty years. Generally the lessons are divided into units, each dealing with a particular culture or era. So, much time was spent on Egypt, Greece and Rome, the medieval period, the Renassiance, China's history, and perhaps Napoleon's period. Then time runs out. I made it a point of leaving myself time at the end of the year to cover in detail World War I and Russia under the last three tsar. I spent two weeks on Russian history leading up to the end of Nicholas and Alexandra. I told their story as a biography rather than a political tale. I made transparencies of all the fabulous pictures seen on this forum. I spent time on the four girls and on Alexei's illness, and Rasputin. I ended with the story of the massacre, using transparencies. And I even managed to get Anna Anderson's story in. At the risk of sounding to brag my students were fascinated by these stories.
One of most enjoyable memories is when the school librarian came to me one day after I had finished this unit and asked me: "James, what are you teaching these kids?" My first thought was, uh, what have I done now. She said that she had twenty students in the library all wanting books about Nicholas and Alexandra and Russia and World War I. Like Tsaritsa has written, the kind of history chidlren learn is what their teachers care to teach them, for good or for bad.





Thanks. At least one person out there is teaching history the way it should be taught. I am glad I started this thread up just to be able to read this. Truthfully, more of this is needed, although it won't happen.

[Romanov_fan]

What sort of things did he say?

Oh, rather stupid things really. "Alexei is short for Alexander." "20% of the people were members of the aristocracy." "The Romanovs began with Alexander I." "Nicholas ordered the shooting on Bloody Sunday." "Russia was not at all industrialized by 1914." My notes actually said that NII ascended the Throne in 1884! The worst thing though was they way he pronouced "RaspuTEEN." I feel so cheated of an education.  

You had me laughing when I read this.. it would be funny if it weren't so sad.

[James1941]

Thank you, imperial angel, I accept your encomium with much gratitude and humility.
We have bashed American education quite a bit here, and perhaps deservedly so. I think it would be interesting to ask non-American members, particularly Russian members, how much or what kind of American history did they learn in secondary school.

[Romanov_fan]

It would be.. there is the response from Estonia on this thread that I enjoyed reading. That might tell you a bit. I think American education in history needs improving, but there are always some out there who do teach it the way it should be taught, although that is rare. I am always glad to read of such things, and actually I just love thris thread.

[Caleb]

I don't think we learned much about Russian history in our World History class (9th grade), if we did, I don't remember it. The only thing I remember learning about Russian history in my class is about those exiled by the czars & the bolsheviks were shipped off to Siberia. I remember talking a bit about the Bolsheviks in 8th grade, though.

[Alixz]

The onther thing that I got out of all the History Classes or Social Studies as they were called until we got into high school was the impression that Russia was medievel and had never truly advanced either in industry or economics.

I also think that because of the "Communist as the Enemy" of democracy and freedom mind set from 1918 through the collapse of the Soviet Union, that it would have been very hard for teachers to have obtained permission to teach in the US a lot about Russia and what happened there.

Those of us who grew up during the intense period of the Cold War thought of the Communists as society thinks of Terrorists today.  Everyone was waiting for the next "shoe to drop" or some kind of attack.

But in reality, I believe that US schools just did not and still don't allocate enough time in the school year for World History.  I think that they forget that US history and world history can not be separated.  Because for everything we were doing here, there was some kind of reaction in the rest of the world.

Perhaps the American Civil War did not impact Russia, but Alexander II freed the serfs just about the time that the US went to war over states rights and slavery.  England was about to come in on the side of the Confederacy because she needed the South's cotton exports but had some trouble with the concept of slave labor, although that never stopped her in her colonization and practical enslavement of other countries.

Because our US schools are in session for only about six hours a day, and that includes recess (PE) and lunch breaks, there is just not enough time in the day to cover everything that needs to be covered.  So sacrifices must be made and they are made by decree of the US Government and what it thinks is important.

Right now that is Math and Science.  This emphasis is made in order for the US to be able to compete with other countries in technology and inventions.

But I believe that if we look back to some of our greatest mathemeticians and inventors, we would find that most of them never even finished grammar school let alone got anywhere near a college or universtiy.  And I am going way back here to Edison and the inventors of the 19th century.

So if anything, history should teach us that great minds are not always molded by the education they receive.  And that some education is wasted on the students.  I have numerous friends who have degrees in Elementary Education who have never set foot inside a classroom to teach.  So what good did their college degree do for them?  They are now working in a cubicle in insurance companies or advertising agencies and one who was (until he suffered a stroke) fixing copiers.

What this has to do with Russian history, I am sorry, I got way off subject.  But if we learned very little about Russia, we learned just a little about England and France and Italy and Prussia and Germany, etc.

[lori_c]

It would be.. there is the response from Estonia on this thread that I enjoyed reading. That might tell you a bit. I think American education in history needs improving, but there are always some out there who do teach it the way it should be taught, although that is rare. I am always glad to read of such things, and actually I just love thris thread.

I love this thread too!  I was never taught any Russian History in school.  Everything i have learned has been independently and through my own enthusiastic research on the subject.

one sidenote:  I have many videos about the IF and have tried to tell the story to my 14 year old daughter.  She seems to relate to poor Alexei the most who was the same age as her when he was killed.

She did come home the other day and tell me that the subject sort of came up when they discussed hemophilia and used Queen Victoria's extended family as an example and specifically  mentioned the poor Tsareavich.   She was very excited about this because we had already discussed it.   But that was the extent of any mention of the IF in history in the curriculum at the 9th grade level at her school.

[RogerV]

You're really making me think back for what seems like centuries to when I was in school.  The Cold War was still raging, though I remember that some of the first "thaws" occurred when I was in high school.  I remember studying The Soviet Union in several different grades, and at some point we got a quick overview of the Russian Revolution to explain how the Soviet Union came to be.  I don't remember being taught much about Russian history previous to the revolution, though somewhere I picked up a very negative impression of Nicholas II.

[lori_c]

You're really making me think back for what seems like centuries to when I was in school.  The Cold War was still raging, though I remember that some of the first "thaws" occurred when I was in high school.  I remember studying The Soviet Union in several different grades, and at some point we got a quick overview of the Russian Revolution to explain how the Soviet Union came to be.  I don't remember being taught much about Russian history previous to the revolution, though somewhere I picked up a very negative impression of Nicholas II.

That's exactly what happened to me. The Cold War was ending as i was ending High School, so glasnost was not quite in place and anything about Russia involved Catherine the Great and then breifly touched on as a country. Almost as if it was of no consequence EXCEPT for communism.  And of course - hemophilia. The Iron Curtain has lifted though and I am so happy for my child's opportunity to learn about what we were taught was the backward, unknown mysterious land of far away Russia.

[tatianolishka_1]

Apparently, it isn't in our curriculum. But in fifth grade, our teacher read us a lovely picture book about the Tsar and his dog (guess how I came to love the IF  ). She told us a bit about it for the afternoon, then it never came up again. Someone told me we would study the Russian Revolution in the tenth grade, but I doubt it. Oh well, at least if it comes up, I'll be waaaay ahead of the class.

[Justine]

In my History Class(9th grade) my teacher was telling me about WWI and Russian Revolution only. Year ago I had also lesson abot Catherine the Great but I had it just because it's also part of history of my country. Anyway we learnt much more about Poland than other countries. I know much more than my friends because I am interested in history. i don't know many things from my school

[Kaie Karadjordjevic]

in England now i think it is part of the history GCSE curiculum. i'm doing it next term and we cover the tsar,the revolution and cummunism. but5 for people who don't do history they don't know anything at all

[s66405h]

I graduated from high school in 1976 in Tennessee.  So please forgive me my failing memory of those teenage angst filled years!  But to answer the question:  I learned nothing about the history of Russia.  The Cold War was still raging.  The USSR was not really a subject we studied. We were learning American History and dealing with Civil Rights and the integration of the public schools way back then.   

[lori_c]

I think until the Cold War ended, most American School Curriculum in History simply runs out of time.  By the time we touched on WWII, the year was almost over and we learned virtually nothing except who won and a little on the outcome.  It just seems there was never enough time.  Perhaps they should extend World history into two years of High School instead of One.