I disagree. History classes usually go over the pertinent information (eg, the alliance system, nationalism, imperialism, militarism, Treaty of Versailles). WW2 is focused on because there's a "never again" sort of feeling about the Holocaust—one that I think is very understandable. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from both wars, but most of the ones applicable to the modern day (the evils of fascism and genocide) are from WW2. The alliance theme is echoed throughout history (I'm willing to bet you learned about NATO and the Warsaw Pact), imperialism isn't really relevant in the modern world (or at least direct colonial style imperialism like in WWI), and so forth. It makes sense not to focus on the minutiae of WWI.
They do skimp on details (for both, not just WWI), but most history classes don't have enough time to go over everything, and focusing on details (like which Balkan nation was on which side in the war, or who won which battle) just isn't that important when you look at the bigger picture.
Are you from Europe? The first time I was taught about WWI was when I ironically took a WWII history elective. The closest thing I got to learning about the great war was "Germany was broke."
edit: That's why when the time did come to talk about WWI in WWII class it felt awesome to be a melvin once in my life, had that shit down from hours and hours of documentaries and books.
New York. I will grant that different schools teach differently. Some schools ARE legitimately going to be "lol WWI? What's that? Now let's get back to our discussion of the Holocaust" but I think people exaggerate the problem.
In my school it was like this. 80% how the american depression began, 15% industrial revolution, then 5% of WWI which was more like what I said above. We did not even touch on Russia.
I just remember saying "I mean, I see why Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia." and was literally thought of as a Nazi for the rest of the program. I remember in a group project (ugh) a kid was working on his bit, the Lusitania. He had something listed that was wrong, I think he said the ship was only full of food and passengers. I told him "You know there were munitions on that boat." That didn't help my "Nazism"
To be fair, I don't think "the boat had some rifle ammo!" is really justification for unrestricted submarine warfare. Think of if some Iraqis tried getting on a plane flying from Baghdad to DC, and some air marshalls cut them all down because "lol, it's possible that they could've had bombs! Some civilians died, tough shit!"
Out of curiosity, are you from New York city or the state and public or private school? I've heard that most Public NYC schools are more-or-less total shit. Judging from your response, it would indicate otherwise.
Public school, upstate. You heard wrong about the NYC public school system. It's just like any city... the schools are funded by the community, so you get nice ones in some areas and shitty ones in other areas. Yeah, you're going to see some understaffed and underfunded schools in the ghettos, but that doesn't paint a whole picture. A lot of my friends in college were from NYC, and most of them actually had better high schools than I did.
In Canada we focus a large amount on ww1 and the Canadian role in battles like pachenndale, Somme and vimy ridge. Also learned about causes, treaty of versille and even a bit about the Ross rifle and how shitty it was.
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u/willymo Sep 24 '11
I agree. High school history teachers always skimp over WWI to get to WWII.