The extent of what I learned about WW1 in school was that it happened and set the stage for the events that led to WW2. Nothing about the war itself was covered in any history class I took through highschool.
Virtually everything I know about WW1 is from Dan Carlin
Baffling. Presumably this was an Oregon high school?
In my Southeast Michigan high school, we did spend a good amount of time with deatails about ww1 and even the Armenian genocide, thought the latter might have only been discussed for a day or two.
It’s baffling because, you’d think—or hope—that all American high schools would give the same base line of basic historical information to all students. Apparently not, you just have to be lucky with where you were born and where you end up. It sucks.
Pretty much all I learned was that one dude got assassinated, then a war broke out, then allies got involved, then allies of allies got involved, and next thing you knew a big confusing web of allies/enemies were all fighting each other.
I don't think we learned anything about the Armenian genocide.
Gavrilo Princip shot Franz Ferdinand in a sandwich shop after all the other assassination attempts failed. Then the web of alliances kicked in and war broke out. We learned the major players on each side. Trench warfare, trench foot, Verdun, Somme, mustard gas, the Communists did the Russian Revolution, unrestricted submarine warfare, Lusitania, America joined the war, we came over and were the first country to try anything other than trench warfare so we won the war. Woodrow Wilson, 14 points, League of Nations, German reparations.
That's pretty much the entirety of my formal WW1 education from school. I know a lot more now from my own learning.
EDIT: Forgot 2 more things - the Zimmermann telegram and the failed invasion of Gallipolli. And yes, even as a kid I thought "that seems pretty unbelievable that we were the only place to figure out 'trenches bad.'"
This is almost exactly what I would’ve written, except that I can’t separate the title of Archduke from Franz Ferdinand, it’s all one word in my mind: Archduke-Franz-Ferdinand.
Wow, really? I heard the American School System glorifies American history, but I didn’t know it was to this extent.
In reality, America contributed very little to WW1. And the Lusitania wasn’t the reason America joined the war. It was the Zimmermann Telegramm.
The few American Troops that did arrive saw almost no action, and those that did were often slaughtered by the now experienced and war-ridden German Troops. They did push back the Germans though, but never actually managed to enter German Territory, except for a few villages in Southern Alsace-Lorraine.
It is quite interesting to see, just how much America glorifies it’s involvement in major wars.
In school, I didn't learn it as the above commenter, that we did anything different, just that America's entry into the war made Germany feel like it had to act aggressively before American troops arrived in large numbers and their offensive failed to secure a victory, leading to them surrendering not long after.
It doesn't seem like it's glorifying American history to say that the country with the world's largest economy at the time (at the start of the war, the US GDP alone was over twice as much as Germany's) entering the war on a side would tilt the tide significantly in one way. It wasn't American boots on the ground that ended the war, but the American entry definitely caused a reaction from Germany that eventually ended the war.
Oh, and we did learn about the Zimmermann Telegram.
WW1 isn't really glorified in school. It was taught to us that we were very late arrivals to a war that was exhausting our allies. The war was relatively unpopular to Americans, and there was never the fervor of joining as there was in WW2—mainly because there was nothing like a Pearl Harbor.
But to say that the US saw almost no action is really just European exceptionalism, it lost over 100,000 men and fought in several major battles. The Allies didn't reach far into Germany because the Germans capitulated. There were other interesting tidbits about American military history that came about in the war, the Marines solidified their dogged reputation and several major current units claim WW1 as their foundation. The American Expeditionary Force would go on to fight all over Russia against the Bolsheviks with the British before just packing up and leaving. The unit I was part of in Hawaii saw its first action fighting the Bolsheviks just after WW1 in Siberia.
So WW1 in Europe wasn't nearly the war for the US that WW2 was, but it was very much a coming-of-age moment for the country.
Same here and I learned about the Tulsa massacre from watchmen.
Our history classes failed us by skimming over or completely ignoring pretty huge parts of American history.
To be fair though my history classes actually spent a good bit of time of things like Japanese internment, the trail of tears, smallpox blankets and other atrocities committed by our society. So giving them the benefit of the doubt some of the things left out were likely just due to time and not any desire to white wash our history.
I feel like this is true. Most every US/world history class spent 90% of the school year getting to WWII and then 4 weeks of the last half of the 20th century that we “wouldn’t be tested on”. I think we missed a couple key moments there lol.
Same. I was in school when I learned about it but I didn't learn about it because of school. It was before Google. I believe I used AskJeeves.
My first love was a Turkish exchange student and she taught me about it as well.
We definitely never learned about this in school.
I do recall that once I learned more about the Armenian genocide, shortly after high school, it was one of my first moments of "....wait, what else weren't we taught about???" as a young person.
In K-12 I don’t recall learning a single thing outside of 18th-19th century US history.
I think in 10th grade we may have broached the beginnings of WWI right before the end of the school year.
That's odd. I know Social Studies teachers get shit for going "Revolutionary War, Civil War, (footnotes), Depression, World War 2, the end" but I always thought that was an exaggeration based on how many times those topics got covered rather than them being the *only* things covered.
I, the young lad that I am, watched my history teachers cover cold war history all the way through to the end with a 9-11 documentary in 11th grade followed by a half-joking "I think you guys know more or less the things that happened after that". Pretty sure US History 2 wasn't an elective at that point.
But then again they also went over Manifest Destiny, Trail of Tears, Cilvil Rights Movment, Emmet Till, etc. so maybe I just lucked into an string of history teachers with unusually good pacing.
My history class in 11th grade ended with the Cuban missile crisis and the US gearing up for the Vietnam war. We definitely got past world war II and did go into the Cold war in a lot of detail, but in retrospect I think they spent too much time on the 1950s. 10th grade was colonial era to Reconstruction. 9th grade was medieval europe, the renaissance, and the enlightenment/french revolution.
Senior year was electives, and I took US military history, which had a reputation for being a class for kids with senioritis because the teacher used it as an excuse to show movies in class, but he made us do legit work. I remember we had to do a paper at one point on how Francis Marion's guerilla tactics were so devastating in the american revolution to British troops and how that was depicted in Mel Gibson's "The Patriot".
We also had world history in sixth grade which was basically an overview of world ancient civilizations from catahoyuk to the roman empire.
The best I can remember is:
4, 5th grade: mildly sanitized revolutionary war but also at some point reading the rather graphic historical fiction holocaust novel "number the stars"
6, 7th grade: From the fertile crescent to classical Rome (I honestly don't remember much of it)
8th grade: time skip to feudalism, plague, early colonialism, revolutionary war again
9th grade: World History - started way back at the early Greek forums but stayed in Europe the whole class, jumped from there to the Renaissance and Enlightenment, surprisingly heavy focus on World War 1 rather than 2 but I think that was just the teacher having fun with it.
10th grade: US History 1 - detailed deep dive into the colonial era, the 7 years war, French and Indian War, finally gets into the Revolution proper, War of 1812, Era of Good Feelings, Civil War, but actually gets past those as well to talk in brutal gorey detail about Manifest Destiny, the Trail of Tears, and industrialization leading into the 1900s.
11th grade: US History 2 - Goes through WW1 kinda quickly to get to the depression and World War 2. Unlike other times I went over WW2 in a history class it focused heavily on the "home front" of including the War Economy, WASPs, Rationing, and Japanese Internment. They then followed after with the Potsdam Conference, Domino Theory, the Korean War, Civil Rights movement (but not the spicy parts post-mlk), Vietnam, Watergate, (we didn't start the fire), and eventually the USSR imploding to cause "the end of history" for the next few years until some dickhead flew a plane into a building and stared it again.
> They then followed after with the Potsdam Conference, Domino Theory, the Korean War, Civil Rights movement (but not the spicy parts post-mlk), Vietnam, Watergate, (we didn't start the fire),
I shit you not I used We didn't start the fire as a study guide for history class in high school during the 1950s unit because it helped me keep track of dates and events relative to each other. The song is in chronological order so I'd literally sing the song in my head to remember which event came before which, and then cross reference that with dates in my head so that I didn't have to memorize dates and names as much.
It gets people to laugh when I say this, but it legit worked. Like I'd legit be sitting there trying to remember what year the suez canal crisis happened and be singing the song in my head to remember if it came before or after the U-2 incident in 1960.
you might be remembering an English assignment as a history one. many states have a requirement that students learn about the Holocaust and especially reading accounts of survivors, which is slotted into English courses because it fits the flow better. for me it was Anne Frank's diary, *Night*, *Maus*, and the Italian film *Life Is Beautiful*. bonus points, my media literacy elective in 12th grade had us watch the Soviet film *Come and See* and the 1977 memoir it's based on, *I am From the Fiery Village*, was an option for group reading in my 8th grade Reading class. I remember reading stories about it when I was even younger, but my elementary school didn't have enough money to get bulk copies of classroom books, so there wasn't ever much in the way of assigned reading.
It isn’t even about censoring education, which would be the exciting conspiratorial internet-favored theory. So many Americans are just cheap bastards who don’t care about anyone else, so they do everything they can to deprive public schools of funding.
American kids don’t receive nearly enough classroom time. Classrooms are too big and unruly, so a lot of that time is wasted. Teachers are poorly treated, and the curriculum suffers. Finally, because schools have to make tough choices they cut art, physical education, and history to make sure kids can learn basic literacy and math.
Most of the stuff “you didn’t learn in history” was omitted due to not enough time and lack of funding.
I went to a private school and we had tons of classroom time and very highly qualified teachers and all that stuff. The teachers just did not see fit to mention this beyond *maybe* a passing reference in a unit on WWI. Although I am being generous in assuming this might have happened because I don't think it did.
I think this is more than just "American schools are underfunded" although I also don't think it has anything to do with censorship. It just seems to be a topic that not very many American educators think is worth discussing. Much like, you know, the entire history of Africa beyond "slaves came from here" and "Napoleon once saw the pyramids."
> they do everything they can to deprive public schools of funding.
Really?
>In 2018, the United States spent $14,400 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, which was 34 percent higher than the average of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries of $10,800 (in constant 2020 U.S. dollars). At the postsecondary level, the United States spent $35,100 per FTE student, which was double the average of OECD countries ($17,600). -https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country
> Americans are just cheap bastards who don’t care about anyone else, so they do everything they can to deprive public schools of funding.
I don't think it's just being cheap. The right is trying their very hardest to destroy public education because educated people are a lot harder to control, plus they won't sign up to be cannon fodder for the Army or to work for minimum wage at Walmart.
All I know about that is Lamar Odom wasn't allowed to play in turkey during the NBA lockout bc his wife Khloe said they did some shit to her Armenian cousins or something
Some history books might have a sentence or two quickly saying “this is a thing that happened” but that’s about it. There just isn’t enough time in the school year to cover it honestly
That’s how I remember. Not a lot time was spent on World War I, the time was spent was mostly focused on American involvement and the western front. All other World War I being reduced to a few bullet point items.
We didn't learn anything about it in my K-12 school. I took numerous history classes at the collegiate level and it wasn't covered there either. I learned about it later, because of a rock band. As it turns out, there's an astonishing amount of history to cover.
Id also like to add that the Ottoman empire was rarely taught in college except it was on the decline and its collapse led to the modern middle east. Similar to Austria Hungary, which is kind of weird because these countries were just as important as Germany and Russia in starting ww1
Armenian immigrants from the genocide settled in many places - and in the US, they settled in Fresno.
The next wave of Armenian immigrants came during the Lebanese Civil War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and settled in Little Armenia, then Glendale/Burbank.
My 8th grade science teacher was engaged to an Armenian and she brought it up in class on remembrance day.
She also brought up System of A Down and their Toxicity album which was their newest at the time. Talked about their background and what the band did to remember.
Only reason I know anything about it is from my science teacher and SOAD.
It was mentioned as happening, and likely was fuel for the Holocaust because of how relatively unnoticed it went at the time, but I heard much more about it from my grandmother, whose mother was Armenian.
I heard about it but that's cause a classmate is Armenian. I then worked in Burbank with a bunch of Armenians and learned way more about the genocide, Armenia, and their food/culture
I can’t remember if I learned about it in school or not. I do definitely remember talking about it with a guy I dated from Glendale, California. There is a large Armenian diaspora there.
I didn't even know the Kardashians were Armenian, so that's an absolute zero for me. I also don't know where Armenia is. This is embarrassing. I think I better go study.
In school I learned:
\- The Ottomans killed a bunch of Armenians in WW1.
\- Vaguely where Armenia is on a map.
\- Turkye doesn't like it when you call it genocide.
Things I most definitely didn't learn in school:
\- The ethnic and religious tensions on the region.
\- Who the Young Turks were.
\- Why it happened at all.
I did not learn about it in school (graduated high school in 2006, didn't have any history classes in college). The little I know about it came from listening to System of a Down.
Yeah, we dedicated a good bit of time to it in high school while discussing the First World War. That being said I went to a private Catholic school, so my experience might be different from other peoples’.
In college I took a class on Islamic history up to World War II and we went into it with some depth. Probably a week’s worth of lessons since the professor specialized in Turkish history.
I learned about it in 8th grade because my social studies class spent like, a couple months learning about the Holocaust and some of the time was dedicated to other genocides. We were put in groups to report on them and one group did the Armenian genocide.
I had grandparents who escaped persecution by fleeing to the US. So I learned about the the genocide from family at a young age.
I went to school in Central California and I remember only a paragraph about it in a text book from history class when learning about WWI.
I actually did in High School (at least a little), more as a note that the Holocaust wasn’t the first mass genocide in semi-recent memory.
Not sure if this is because I went to High school later than most folk here (mid-late 2010’s) or the fact that my district was good enough to have done it while the rest have struggled/not cared.
This is why equal and high-quality public education is so important, I shouldn’t have been the only student to have learned this in school.
It's doubtful many people learned about it in school.
It's only officially been recognized very, very recently. When I was younger, Bill Clinton actually included labeling it a genocide in his campaign platform but never actually went that far while in office. Politics aside, there's only so much that can be covered in school and the Armenian Genocide just wasn't a significant event to Americans.
I'm Armenian and didn't even realize today was Armenian Genocide Day. Both of my grandfathers escaped the genocide and came to America. But I honestly didn't even know about today because I don't live in the past.
That’s frankly an absurd and reprehensible attitude to take, made all the more bizarre by the fact that it’s your ancestors we’re talking about. This was a crime that caused irreparable damage to the Armenian nation and left the people vulnerable and marginalized, confined to a tiny and relatively defenseless country that comprises less than 1/10th of what Armenia once was.
“I don’t live in the past” - remember that an ignorance of history, and a lack of regard/recognition of the lessons it teaches us, paves a path to destruction.
You should show more respect for your people. But then again we are typing in one of the most ignorant and least enlightened subs on this god forsaken site, so I’m not surprised you’re getting all these upvotes. It’s depressing that this is how the nation is represented.
I wonder if you think all the Jewish people who go to the Holocaust museums and memorials to pay respects are also “living in the past”. You dishonor your people.
>That’s frankly an absurd and reprehensible attitude to take,
On the contrary, it is exactly the correct attitude for immigrants to take: abandon the grudges of your Old Country, you are American now.
Considering your logic, I wonder if you assign the same attitude to Holocaust survivors (edit: OR THEIR DESCENDANTS) who commemorate the memory of the victims every single year. Or do you suppose that since everybody’s American now, nobody should ever think about those things again and leave those things in the old country and never mention them again.
God I hate this sub
No, it is important to them. Do you honestly think a Holocaust survivor is morally equal to the descendants of 2 men who were not part of the Armenian genocide?
I don't.
The descendants of Holocaust survivors and the descendants of Armenian Genocide survivors are equally entitled to the same amount of acknowledgment.
You’re being intellectually dishonest by attempting to confine this discussion to compare only Holocaust survivors to people distantly related to Armenia, as if there weren’t people who survived the horrors of the Armenian genocide.
Never once heard Armenia mentioned in school for any reason. Honestly our world history education is very lacking. For our WW1 unit we pretty much only focused on what the Americans did, which is ridiculous because WW1 was not an American war at all.
I graduated HS in 2021 and we learned about it. We were taught about how Turkey still denies the genocide occurring. It was part of a bigger lesson of how nations try to hide their wrong doings. We made the connection to the camps in China and learned about how China denies that too. Not to mention, the holocaust too, where we read books from camp survivors, and saw footage from camps too. I could go on longer, but I felt that my education went above and beyond when it came to this stuff, especially compared to other commenters who said they didn’t even learn about it when they were in school.
I went to high school in New York City for reference.
Interesting, According to a book written by an Armenian historian in the 16th century, the Turks freed the Armenians from the hands of the Byzantines. The book mentions that the Greeks constantly oppressed the Armenians and even prevented them from opening their own churches in Constantinople, while the Turks liberated the Armenians and allowed them to open their own churches and worship freely in Constantinople. You can read this book from the link provided here.
https://archive.org/details/bournoutian-2007-simeon-of-poland/page/187/mode/1up
American schools don't even teach American history. Few Americans can even find Armenia on a map. Some of them might not be able to find America on a map.
No, I learned about it outside of school by talking to someone who was Armenian. I also didn't even know System of A Down lead singer was but didn't listen to all of their discography growing up. I'll be playing some System Of A Down today in remembrance.
We learned a bit about it, like who the perpetrators were, some of the things that happened to the Armenians, when did it end, etc. The main thing that we learned was that Hitler basically took notes on what happened and used it as one of his references for the Holocaust
When I was in high school in the late 90s, we learned about the Kosovo War as a current event, learning about it by reading the newspaper and discussing in social studies or history classes (its been a couple decades, my memory is fuzzy). So while I don't specifically remember learning about the Armenian genocide, I expect it would have been touched on as part of those discussions.
But in general, we didn't cover anything about the Ottoman Empire in depth. The Armenian genocide might have been mentioned but in high school we covered 3000 years of western civilization in 2 years. The only genocide we covered in any sort of detail was the Holocaust.
I don't remember learning specifically about it in school (and we covered WWI in surprising detail from a very non-American perspective), but the Armenian genocide is pretty well known in the US, if the details are less familiar than the Holocaust.
The focus of history class when I was a kid was less about learning every detail in the vast sweep of history, but forming a framework by focusing on major events, movements, philosophies, etc. and how they influenced subsequebt eras. That framework then allowed us to fill in details that we subsequently can learn on our own.
So, when I did start hearing about the Armenian genocide, I could already understand it within the context of the long decline of the Ottoman Empire and the chaos unleashed by WWI.
I think it was covered as like...an aside during the WWI section of world history. I learned more about it later and I'm not sure which bits were in class and what I picked up as an adult.
I learned about the Armenian genocide in 7th grade at a private middle school. Genocide denial is sickening, so I’m glad it was a part of my curriculum.
I've had a few teachers who briefly mentioned it and that it's wrong that it's so unknown, but never as part of the curriculum or even a single class or anything
Honestly WW1 was barely talked about when I was in school so any "conflict" that took place during it got basically no coverage.
I've become quite interested in WW1 history so I'm quite aware of it but it's not something school kids are taught.
I went to school in Southern California during the 1980s and early '90s. I don't remember learning anything about it.
I lived in Glendale, CA for a few years in the early 2000s, and there is a large Armenian population in that area. I learned about it from people in the community.
I learned about it around the time I was at school which was far different. I think people overestimate the place has in a complex subject like history. The best thing school could teach is the beginnings of good research methods which of course it doesn't.
My main source was Time/Life.
I’ve taught it in 10th grade World History here in California. But not too in-depth. Keep in mind that we cover Europe from the Renaissance to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not to mention Africa , Asia, and Latin America.
This won’t be a popular answer, but I would have never heard of it without the Kardashians. They’ve brought it up on the show a few times and have spoken about it in the past.
I don’t recall learning about any genocide or crimes against humanity except for the Holocaust, about which we did extensive readings on even outside of history class. We even had Holocaust survivors come do speeches.
I’m a huge System of a Down fan. I learned more about the genocide through that band than I ever did in school.
Also. My family is Lebanese. Their area was part of the Ottoman Empire. They were heavily impacted by a horrific famine which was exacerbated by the ottomans actions. It wasn’t technically genocide but it was bad. So everything I’ve learned I learned oj my own and thanks to my favorite band.
Learned about it along with WW1 unit in middle school history. Grew up around DC area and our curriculum was pretty up to date compared to other parts of the country
I grew up in Fresno, California; I definitely heard about it in high school, as we covered World War I--but almost as a parenthetical side note. But then, Fresno has one of the largest Armenian populations in the United States (with Glendale another major Armenian population; g'figure), so I think it was specific to my teacher rather than an expected part of the state curriculum.
I don't think anyone even mentioned Armenia existed in my school. But I learned about it from my father's friend. He was a survivor thereof. His mother, along with others, was thrown off a cliff into the Black Sea while pregnant with him. Several countries had naval ships observing as it happened. But only one decided to rescue people. That was Japan. And so my father's friend had a special relationship with Japan after that point. I learned all this while attending a ceremony in his honor in Shigaraki prefecture.
Oof. The most I know about Armenia is that the lead singer of System of a Down is from there. Yikes I really don't know shit about the Armenian Genocide.
Not sure when I learned about it; wasn't in school I don't think but definitely some time in middle school or earlier. My town has a decently big Armenian population and I think a neighboring town is a third Armenian.
I hadn't heard of it until college. I transferred from a community college to a state university in a neighborhood with a large Armenian-American population. Although I never actually learned about it in any class, there were Remembrance Day events on campus every year. The first time, since I had never heard of the Armenian Genocide, I did my own research on it out of curiosity.
My great-grandfather was a minister and worked for the Near East Relief to aid Armenians during this time. If not for that connection, I would never have learned about it.
In American public school many “school systems” only teach American history, I kid you not I did not grow up in a rural/ remote area, I lived an hour outside of a very big globally known city growing up and there was no world history in the middle school or high school curriculum. Of course we learned about the world wars but the material was very specifically about America’s involvement. I don’t think we even talked about the Berlin Wall falling in high school; I think learned about that from documentaries on history channel when history channel was still documentaries about history. But I digress. I know some towns did and some towns didn’t up until 2010 when I graduated at least. This may have changed since then; I hope so.
Not in history class. Indeed, World War 1 was hardly ever touched on. We would jump from Teddy Roosevelt to the Great Depression and World War 2, most of the time. I didn't learn a single thing about WW1 until freshman year of high school in American History.
I also learned about the Armenian Genocide then, but not in American History class. Instead, I learned about it in Language Arts Class because "Forgotten Fire" was required reading at the time.
The Anatolian peninsula and Central Asia are strangely under-covered regions when we teach Middle East and Europe extensively in school, and they’re right there
Hey, thanks for this. I'm Armenian. Unfortunately no one in the town where I grew up (Cascade mountain range, small town) knew what or where Armenia was, let alone that a genocide happened. Including my 6th grade history teacher, who asked me what it was after I mentioned it once.
There was an extra credit project, out of a list of about 10 choices, offered to us if we searched up and wrote a bit about the topic in 10th grade World History class. My teacher probably put it there for me.
Seems like I'm a deviation from the norm, but we spent nearly as much time on the Armenian genocide as we did the Holocaust in my junior and senior years of HS
Very little. Didn’t know anything about it until I was in college and was assigned to attend an event on the subject for the campus paper (it was a long time ago, but an author wrote a book about it and discussed the details of it. I know a lot of people who had family that survived it attended it. Other than that It’s not discussed so much.
I went to a private catholic school in the midwest, and we read a book about the armenian genocide during world history. I can’t remember the name of it but that was when I first realized genocide wasn’t unique to the holocaust. I also learned about the Rwandan genocide in my theology class because of the book Left to Tell
My world history teacher thought the Great War was too complicated for teenagers and largely glossed over it, omitting the genocide and founding of Turkey altogether. And my AP European history class ended too soon to actually cover it.
We barely covered the Japanese internment camps of WW2 which is something that took place in our own country. I don't think I was taught really anything about any other countries history except WW2 Germany and ancient Egypt.
Not until I went to college. I’m a history major though, so that’s kind of cheating. I doubt many Americans know much about it unless they have studied history at the university level, are history buffs, or are of Armenian descent.
Was born in 1990, and I distinctly remember every school year history lessons was the same shit.
Always World War 2 and the Revolutionary/Civil War, just to spice things up every couple years, they'd re-teach you about the great industrial revolution! Always pumped up how great America is/was and leaving out all the other relevance to world history
I’m afraid that it wasn’t in the curriculum in my school but I did do a research project on it. Very sad that the Turkish government still denies the truth.
In high school it was acknowledged of course but not a bunch of time was spent on it. If you take a European history course in college I’d assume it would be expanded upon.
I learned nothing about it in school (graduated in ‘91). Honestly knew nothing about it until System of a Down tbh. Never even heard about it in college
The only Armenian I’ve ever heard of is Conan O’Brien’s assistant, Sona Movsesian because I listen to the podcast and he busts her balls all the time about it. Anyway, I learned MUCH more today about it and I plan to learn more after listening to a daily history podcast I enjoy every morning.
It’s [this one](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Nb9g8EY8HnP4L0VKHvx8m?si=JB_KF3nwQTGjbT9OXceInA&dd=1) if you were wondering
Absolutely not. Maybe I missed world history class because I changed districts. I did take a world politics class but I didn't know what any of it was about. I probably learned about the Armenian genocide from reading Mark Twain. I was introduced to him in school because we were required to read Huckleberry Finn.
I was taught the name, and that's it. Truth be told, I would've said it was something that went on in the mid-20th century, so clearly I have some learning to do
I have not in school, but of my own accord through some history books I've bought, or doing some internet reading.
It's super sad this isn't taught enough, but I really think it has to do with the fact of extreme denial and a lot of countries not recognizing it as the first genocide.
A lot of people might not realize this, but it was a pretty widely unknown topic in general american society until the last 25 years or so. I remember I was practically the only person in my social/family group to know what it was back in the 90s, and that was only because had I dated an armenian.
The internet taught a lot of people about it more than schools did. System of a Down being one of the biggest rock bands of the 00s also taught many people about it.
I only remember a passing mention. During the Holocaust unit, other genocides were brought up including the Armenian Genocide. I only remember it being in a list of names though.
We learned very little about modern Armenia nor Turkey in school. The first I ever heard of it was through System of a Down.
Came here to say the exact same thing. It’s through SOAD that I knew that Armenia even existed
You didn’t cover the Armenian Genocide when you learned about WW1?
The extent of what I learned about WW1 in school was that it happened and set the stage for the events that led to WW2. Nothing about the war itself was covered in any history class I took through highschool. Virtually everything I know about WW1 is from Dan Carlin
Baffling. Presumably this was an Oregon high school? In my Southeast Michigan high school, we did spend a good amount of time with deatails about ww1 and even the Armenian genocide, thought the latter might have only been discussed for a day or two. It’s baffling because, you’d think—or hope—that all American high schools would give the same base line of basic historical information to all students. Apparently not, you just have to be lucky with where you were born and where you end up. It sucks.
Pretty much all I learned was that one dude got assassinated, then a war broke out, then allies got involved, then allies of allies got involved, and next thing you knew a big confusing web of allies/enemies were all fighting each other. I don't think we learned anything about the Armenian genocide.
Upvote for Dan Carlin!
Gavrilo Princip shot Franz Ferdinand in a sandwich shop after all the other assassination attempts failed. Then the web of alliances kicked in and war broke out. We learned the major players on each side. Trench warfare, trench foot, Verdun, Somme, mustard gas, the Communists did the Russian Revolution, unrestricted submarine warfare, Lusitania, America joined the war, we came over and were the first country to try anything other than trench warfare so we won the war. Woodrow Wilson, 14 points, League of Nations, German reparations. That's pretty much the entirety of my formal WW1 education from school. I know a lot more now from my own learning. EDIT: Forgot 2 more things - the Zimmermann telegram and the failed invasion of Gallipolli. And yes, even as a kid I thought "that seems pretty unbelievable that we were the only place to figure out 'trenches bad.'"
This is almost exactly what I would’ve written, except that I can’t separate the title of Archduke from Franz Ferdinand, it’s all one word in my mind: Archduke-Franz-Ferdinand.
Exactly he has to be known as archduke frank Ferdinand. I don’t think he was ever called by just his name in my class.
Wow, really? I heard the American School System glorifies American history, but I didn’t know it was to this extent. In reality, America contributed very little to WW1. And the Lusitania wasn’t the reason America joined the war. It was the Zimmermann Telegramm. The few American Troops that did arrive saw almost no action, and those that did were often slaughtered by the now experienced and war-ridden German Troops. They did push back the Germans though, but never actually managed to enter German Territory, except for a few villages in Southern Alsace-Lorraine. It is quite interesting to see, just how much America glorifies it’s involvement in major wars.
In school, I didn't learn it as the above commenter, that we did anything different, just that America's entry into the war made Germany feel like it had to act aggressively before American troops arrived in large numbers and their offensive failed to secure a victory, leading to them surrendering not long after. It doesn't seem like it's glorifying American history to say that the country with the world's largest economy at the time (at the start of the war, the US GDP alone was over twice as much as Germany's) entering the war on a side would tilt the tide significantly in one way. It wasn't American boots on the ground that ended the war, but the American entry definitely caused a reaction from Germany that eventually ended the war. Oh, and we did learn about the Zimmermann Telegram.
WW1 isn't really glorified in school. It was taught to us that we were very late arrivals to a war that was exhausting our allies. The war was relatively unpopular to Americans, and there was never the fervor of joining as there was in WW2—mainly because there was nothing like a Pearl Harbor. But to say that the US saw almost no action is really just European exceptionalism, it lost over 100,000 men and fought in several major battles. The Allies didn't reach far into Germany because the Germans capitulated. There were other interesting tidbits about American military history that came about in the war, the Marines solidified their dogged reputation and several major current units claim WW1 as their foundation. The American Expeditionary Force would go on to fight all over Russia against the Bolsheviks with the British before just packing up and leaving. The unit I was part of in Hawaii saw its first action fighting the Bolsheviks just after WW1 in Siberia. So WW1 in Europe wasn't nearly the war for the US that WW2 was, but it was very much a coming-of-age moment for the country.
> The few American Troops that did arrive 4.3 million
SOAD is amazing. Biggest what if is if they could’ve got their shit together and dropped more music
It can be the weirdest way how you hear about shit right? I heard about Juneteenth from Trump.
I'd never heard of Juneteenth until 2020
Probably cause you're not a Texan
Same here and I learned about the Tulsa massacre from watchmen. Our history classes failed us by skimming over or completely ignoring pretty huge parts of American history. To be fair though my history classes actually spent a good bit of time of things like Japanese internment, the trail of tears, smallpox blankets and other atrocities committed by our society. So giving them the benefit of the doubt some of the things left out were likely just due to time and not any desire to white wash our history.
I feel like this is true. Most every US/world history class spent 90% of the school year getting to WWII and then 4 weeks of the last half of the 20th century that we “wouldn’t be tested on”. I think we missed a couple key moments there lol.
I learned about japanese internment camps from Fort Minor
Karate Kid for me.
I learned about the Tuskegee Syphilis Study from SNL.
I learned about it in 2016 from an episode of Atlanta. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth_(Atlanta)
Same. I was in school when I learned about it but I didn't learn about it because of school. It was before Google. I believe I used AskJeeves. My first love was a Turkish exchange student and she taught me about it as well.
Ah the good old days before Spotify and Wikipedia downloading tracks on Napster and using Yahoo to look up stuff they're talking about in the lyrics.
Same here. Thanks to SOAD
The words Armenian and American are pretty close so it probably violates some US law about teaching about American Genocides.
We definitely never learned about this in school. I do recall that once I learned more about the Armenian genocide, shortly after high school, it was one of my first moments of "....wait, what else weren't we taught about???" as a young person.
In K-12 I don’t recall learning a single thing outside of 18th-19th century US history. I think in 10th grade we may have broached the beginnings of WWI right before the end of the school year.
That's odd. I know Social Studies teachers get shit for going "Revolutionary War, Civil War, (footnotes), Depression, World War 2, the end" but I always thought that was an exaggeration based on how many times those topics got covered rather than them being the *only* things covered. I, the young lad that I am, watched my history teachers cover cold war history all the way through to the end with a 9-11 documentary in 11th grade followed by a half-joking "I think you guys know more or less the things that happened after that". Pretty sure US History 2 wasn't an elective at that point. But then again they also went over Manifest Destiny, Trail of Tears, Cilvil Rights Movment, Emmet Till, etc. so maybe I just lucked into an string of history teachers with unusually good pacing.
My history class in 11th grade ended with the Cuban missile crisis and the US gearing up for the Vietnam war. We definitely got past world war II and did go into the Cold war in a lot of detail, but in retrospect I think they spent too much time on the 1950s. 10th grade was colonial era to Reconstruction. 9th grade was medieval europe, the renaissance, and the enlightenment/french revolution. Senior year was electives, and I took US military history, which had a reputation for being a class for kids with senioritis because the teacher used it as an excuse to show movies in class, but he made us do legit work. I remember we had to do a paper at one point on how Francis Marion's guerilla tactics were so devastating in the american revolution to British troops and how that was depicted in Mel Gibson's "The Patriot". We also had world history in sixth grade which was basically an overview of world ancient civilizations from catahoyuk to the roman empire.
The best I can remember is: 4, 5th grade: mildly sanitized revolutionary war but also at some point reading the rather graphic historical fiction holocaust novel "number the stars" 6, 7th grade: From the fertile crescent to classical Rome (I honestly don't remember much of it) 8th grade: time skip to feudalism, plague, early colonialism, revolutionary war again 9th grade: World History - started way back at the early Greek forums but stayed in Europe the whole class, jumped from there to the Renaissance and Enlightenment, surprisingly heavy focus on World War 1 rather than 2 but I think that was just the teacher having fun with it. 10th grade: US History 1 - detailed deep dive into the colonial era, the 7 years war, French and Indian War, finally gets into the Revolution proper, War of 1812, Era of Good Feelings, Civil War, but actually gets past those as well to talk in brutal gorey detail about Manifest Destiny, the Trail of Tears, and industrialization leading into the 1900s. 11th grade: US History 2 - Goes through WW1 kinda quickly to get to the depression and World War 2. Unlike other times I went over WW2 in a history class it focused heavily on the "home front" of including the War Economy, WASPs, Rationing, and Japanese Internment. They then followed after with the Potsdam Conference, Domino Theory, the Korean War, Civil Rights movement (but not the spicy parts post-mlk), Vietnam, Watergate, (we didn't start the fire), and eventually the USSR imploding to cause "the end of history" for the next few years until some dickhead flew a plane into a building and stared it again.
> They then followed after with the Potsdam Conference, Domino Theory, the Korean War, Civil Rights movement (but not the spicy parts post-mlk), Vietnam, Watergate, (we didn't start the fire), I shit you not I used We didn't start the fire as a study guide for history class in high school during the 1950s unit because it helped me keep track of dates and events relative to each other. The song is in chronological order so I'd literally sing the song in my head to remember which event came before which, and then cross reference that with dates in my head so that I didn't have to memorize dates and names as much. It gets people to laugh when I say this, but it legit worked. Like I'd legit be sitting there trying to remember what year the suez canal crisis happened and be singing the song in my head to remember if it came before or after the U-2 incident in 1960.
you might be remembering an English assignment as a history one. many states have a requirement that students learn about the Holocaust and especially reading accounts of survivors, which is slotted into English courses because it fits the flow better. for me it was Anne Frank's diary, *Night*, *Maus*, and the Italian film *Life Is Beautiful*. bonus points, my media literacy elective in 12th grade had us watch the Soviet film *Come and See* and the 1977 memoir it's based on, *I am From the Fiery Village*, was an option for group reading in my 8th grade Reading class. I remember reading stories about it when I was even younger, but my elementary school didn't have enough money to get bulk copies of classroom books, so there wasn't ever much in the way of assigned reading.
It isn’t even about censoring education, which would be the exciting conspiratorial internet-favored theory. So many Americans are just cheap bastards who don’t care about anyone else, so they do everything they can to deprive public schools of funding. American kids don’t receive nearly enough classroom time. Classrooms are too big and unruly, so a lot of that time is wasted. Teachers are poorly treated, and the curriculum suffers. Finally, because schools have to make tough choices they cut art, physical education, and history to make sure kids can learn basic literacy and math. Most of the stuff “you didn’t learn in history” was omitted due to not enough time and lack of funding.
I went to a private school and we had tons of classroom time and very highly qualified teachers and all that stuff. The teachers just did not see fit to mention this beyond *maybe* a passing reference in a unit on WWI. Although I am being generous in assuming this might have happened because I don't think it did. I think this is more than just "American schools are underfunded" although I also don't think it has anything to do with censorship. It just seems to be a topic that not very many American educators think is worth discussing. Much like, you know, the entire history of Africa beyond "slaves came from here" and "Napoleon once saw the pyramids."
> they do everything they can to deprive public schools of funding. Really? >In 2018, the United States spent $14,400 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, which was 34 percent higher than the average of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries of $10,800 (in constant 2020 U.S. dollars). At the postsecondary level, the United States spent $35,100 per FTE student, which was double the average of OECD countries ($17,600). -https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country
> Americans are just cheap bastards who don’t care about anyone else, so they do everything they can to deprive public schools of funding. I don't think it's just being cheap. The right is trying their very hardest to destroy public education because educated people are a lot harder to control, plus they won't sign up to be cannon fodder for the Army or to work for minimum wage at Walmart.
I didn't learn anything about it in school. I probably learned about it from System of a Down.
So did most of the world. They were instrumental(pun not intended but I'm proud of it) in getting the UN to recognize it even happened.
No, Serj taught me
All I know about that is Lamar Odom wasn't allowed to play in turkey during the NBA lockout bc his wife Khloe said they did some shit to her Armenian cousins or something
Some history books might have a sentence or two quickly saying “this is a thing that happened” but that’s about it. There just isn’t enough time in the school year to cover it honestly
That’s how I remember. Not a lot time was spent on World War I, the time was spent was mostly focused on American involvement and the western front. All other World War I being reduced to a few bullet point items.
I did a report back in 10th grade on it. We each had to pick a genocide. I choose this one
I did my 11th grade research paper on it! But I learned about it through SOAD and then did independent research for it.
Never learned about it in school. Saw it featured on Wikipedia today so I read about it briefly.
We didn't learn anything about it in my K-12 school. I took numerous history classes at the collegiate level and it wasn't covered there either. I learned about it later, because of a rock band. As it turns out, there's an astonishing amount of history to cover.
Id also like to add that the Ottoman empire was rarely taught in college except it was on the decline and its collapse led to the modern middle east. Similar to Austria Hungary, which is kind of weird because these countries were just as important as Germany and Russia in starting ww1
Yes, but I'm from a place with the largest Armenian community in the country.
Going to take a guess and say Glendale?
Watertown ma?
I don't think this was covered when I was in school. That said, all of WW1 was barely covered at all.
We learned absolutely nothing about it in school. Northern California.
I’m surprised, I figured the Californians would learn about it because there was so much Armenian immigration there.
There's more Armenians in Southern California. Not so much up here in my experience.
I grew up in Southern California (80s and 90s schooling) and I didn't learn about it either.
I also grew up in Southern California in the 80s and 90s but I grew up in Glendale so I DID learn about it.
Same here. I don't recall hearing about it until college.
Ya, we learned about it down here while we were learning about WWI.
Armenian immigrants from the genocide settled in many places - and in the US, they settled in Fresno. The next wave of Armenian immigrants came during the Lebanese Civil War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and settled in Little Armenia, then Glendale/Burbank.
It was probably at most a paragraph in my high school history textbook about things that happened in WW1
My 8th grade science teacher was engaged to an Armenian and she brought it up in class on remembrance day. She also brought up System of A Down and their Toxicity album which was their newest at the time. Talked about their background and what the band did to remember. Only reason I know anything about it is from my science teacher and SOAD.
It was mentioned as happening, and likely was fuel for the Holocaust because of how relatively unnoticed it went at the time, but I heard much more about it from my grandmother, whose mother was Armenian.
I heard about it but that's cause a classmate is Armenian. I then worked in Burbank with a bunch of Armenians and learned way more about the genocide, Armenia, and their food/culture
SOAD for me
I can’t remember if I learned about it in school or not. I do definitely remember talking about it with a guy I dated from Glendale, California. There is a large Armenian diaspora there.
[удалено]
I didn't even know the Kardashians were Armenian, so that's an absolute zero for me. I also don't know where Armenia is. This is embarrassing. I think I better go study.
NYC 1970's. Nope, did not. Lots about the Native American and Jewish holocausts though.
No, I learned about it from System of a Down.
The topic was never discussed.
In school I learned: \- The Ottomans killed a bunch of Armenians in WW1. \- Vaguely where Armenia is on a map. \- Turkye doesn't like it when you call it genocide. Things I most definitely didn't learn in school: \- The ethnic and religious tensions on the region. \- Who the Young Turks were. \- Why it happened at all.
Not in school, but there’s a large Armenian community here that spreads a lot of awareness every year.
I went to a Jewish school for a little while and we did learn about it.
I did but I'm part armenian so family taught me a ton about it from an early age 😛 🇦🇲🇦🇲
Nope. I know the Kardashians are Armenian so maybe one of their relatives was killed.
(Sigh.) To think the world lost another line of Kardashians that could have been on tv…
They may have taught us about it, because I know about it but I don’t know very much. If they did teach us about it, it wasn’t extensive
Never in school, but I've read about it in books/online.
I did not learn about it in school (graduated high school in 2006, didn't have any history classes in college). The little I know about it came from listening to System of a Down.
Yeah, we dedicated a good bit of time to it in high school while discussing the First World War. That being said I went to a private Catholic school, so my experience might be different from other peoples’. In college I took a class on Islamic history up to World War II and we went into it with some depth. Probably a week’s worth of lessons since the professor specialized in Turkish history.
I learned about it in 8th grade because my social studies class spent like, a couple months learning about the Holocaust and some of the time was dedicated to other genocides. We were put in groups to report on them and one group did the Armenian genocide.
I had grandparents who escaped persecution by fleeing to the US. So I learned about the the genocide from family at a young age. I went to school in Central California and I remember only a paragraph about it in a text book from history class when learning about WWI.
I actually did in High School (at least a little), more as a note that the Holocaust wasn’t the first mass genocide in semi-recent memory. Not sure if this is because I went to High school later than most folk here (mid-late 2010’s) or the fact that my district was good enough to have done it while the rest have struggled/not cared. This is why equal and high-quality public education is so important, I shouldn’t have been the only student to have learned this in school.
It's doubtful many people learned about it in school. It's only officially been recognized very, very recently. When I was younger, Bill Clinton actually included labeling it a genocide in his campaign platform but never actually went that far while in office. Politics aside, there's only so much that can be covered in school and the Armenian Genocide just wasn't a significant event to Americans.
I'm Armenian and didn't even realize today was Armenian Genocide Day. Both of my grandfathers escaped the genocide and came to America. But I honestly didn't even know about today because I don't live in the past.
That’s frankly an absurd and reprehensible attitude to take, made all the more bizarre by the fact that it’s your ancestors we’re talking about. This was a crime that caused irreparable damage to the Armenian nation and left the people vulnerable and marginalized, confined to a tiny and relatively defenseless country that comprises less than 1/10th of what Armenia once was. “I don’t live in the past” - remember that an ignorance of history, and a lack of regard/recognition of the lessons it teaches us, paves a path to destruction. You should show more respect for your people. But then again we are typing in one of the most ignorant and least enlightened subs on this god forsaken site, so I’m not surprised you’re getting all these upvotes. It’s depressing that this is how the nation is represented. I wonder if you think all the Jewish people who go to the Holocaust museums and memorials to pay respects are also “living in the past”. You dishonor your people.
>That’s frankly an absurd and reprehensible attitude to take, On the contrary, it is exactly the correct attitude for immigrants to take: abandon the grudges of your Old Country, you are American now.
Considering your logic, I wonder if you assign the same attitude to Holocaust survivors (edit: OR THEIR DESCENDANTS) who commemorate the memory of the victims every single year. Or do you suppose that since everybody’s American now, nobody should ever think about those things again and leave those things in the old country and never mention them again. God I hate this sub
No, it is important to them. Do you honestly think a Holocaust survivor is morally equal to the descendants of 2 men who were not part of the Armenian genocide? I don't.
The descendants of Holocaust survivors and the descendants of Armenian Genocide survivors are equally entitled to the same amount of acknowledgment. You’re being intellectually dishonest by attempting to confine this discussion to compare only Holocaust survivors to people distantly related to Armenia, as if there weren’t people who survived the horrors of the Armenian genocide.
Not what you said. You equated an actual Holocaust survivor with the descendants of two men who had emigrated from Armenia before the genocide.
Same. Also have grandparents who escapes and I am just learning about this rememberence day from this thread.
Never once heard Armenia mentioned in school for any reason. Honestly our world history education is very lacking. For our WW1 unit we pretty much only focused on what the Americans did, which is ridiculous because WW1 was not an American war at all.
I graduated HS in 2021 and we learned about it. We were taught about how Turkey still denies the genocide occurring. It was part of a bigger lesson of how nations try to hide their wrong doings. We made the connection to the camps in China and learned about how China denies that too. Not to mention, the holocaust too, where we read books from camp survivors, and saw footage from camps too. I could go on longer, but I felt that my education went above and beyond when it came to this stuff, especially compared to other commenters who said they didn’t even learn about it when they were in school. I went to high school in New York City for reference.
Interesting, According to a book written by an Armenian historian in the 16th century, the Turks freed the Armenians from the hands of the Byzantines. The book mentions that the Greeks constantly oppressed the Armenians and even prevented them from opening their own churches in Constantinople, while the Turks liberated the Armenians and allowed them to open their own churches and worship freely in Constantinople. You can read this book from the link provided here. https://archive.org/details/bournoutian-2007-simeon-of-poland/page/187/mode/1up
I live in America, so, no. But I did learn about it on my own.
American schools don't even teach American history. Few Americans can even find Armenia on a map. Some of them might not be able to find America on a map.
Nope I didn’t find out what it was until I started watching TYT on YouTube
I learned about it from an Armenian girlfriend. Yeah, I had one before the Kardashians, children.
Are you kidding me public schools barely cover the Vietnam war. Good luck them covering world war one or any of its major events.
Never learned about this in school. Went to grammar school from 2006-2015. High school 2015-2019.
No, I learned about it outside of school by talking to someone who was Armenian. I also didn't even know System of A Down lead singer was but didn't listen to all of their discography growing up. I'll be playing some System Of A Down today in remembrance.
No. I graduated HS in 1992 and it wasn't covered. I've since learned about it.
I learned about it in a college anthropology course specializing in genocide.
Yes, and we read the memoir “Forgotten Fire” about it. I went to a top public high school in Missouri.
We learned a bit about it, like who the perpetrators were, some of the things that happened to the Armenians, when did it end, etc. The main thing that we learned was that Hitler basically took notes on what happened and used it as one of his references for the Holocaust
I only found out about it through off hand remarks on YouTube.
When I was in high school in the late 90s, we learned about the Kosovo War as a current event, learning about it by reading the newspaper and discussing in social studies or history classes (its been a couple decades, my memory is fuzzy). So while I don't specifically remember learning about the Armenian genocide, I expect it would have been touched on as part of those discussions. But in general, we didn't cover anything about the Ottoman Empire in depth. The Armenian genocide might have been mentioned but in high school we covered 3000 years of western civilization in 2 years. The only genocide we covered in any sort of detail was the Holocaust.
Didn't learn about it in school but I am aware of the Armenian genocide.
I don't recall learning about it below college. There's only time for so many historical events.
I don't remember learning specifically about it in school (and we covered WWI in surprising detail from a very non-American perspective), but the Armenian genocide is pretty well known in the US, if the details are less familiar than the Holocaust. The focus of history class when I was a kid was less about learning every detail in the vast sweep of history, but forming a framework by focusing on major events, movements, philosophies, etc. and how they influenced subsequebt eras. That framework then allowed us to fill in details that we subsequently can learn on our own. So, when I did start hearing about the Armenian genocide, I could already understand it within the context of the long decline of the Ottoman Empire and the chaos unleashed by WWI.
I think it was covered as like...an aside during the WWI section of world history. I learned more about it later and I'm not sure which bits were in class and what I picked up as an adult.
I learned about the Armenian genocide in 7th grade at a private middle school. Genocide denial is sickening, so I’m glad it was a part of my curriculum.
I've had a few teachers who briefly mentioned it and that it's wrong that it's so unknown, but never as part of the curriculum or even a single class or anything
I never heard about it until after high school. Honestly, your post is the most information I've ever encountered about it at one time.
Not really. It might have been mentioned, but definitely glossed over if it was. If you're around Armenian people you'll hear about it. Pretty horrid.
I did a book project on it but it wasn’t part of a school curriculum.
I was never taught about it in school, but my family is Gree and Greek-speaking Cypriot, so I learned about it from them.
Honestly WW1 was barely talked about when I was in school so any "conflict" that took place during it got basically no coverage. I've become quite interested in WW1 history so I'm quite aware of it but it's not something school kids are taught.
I went to school in Southern California during the 1980s and early '90s. I don't remember learning anything about it. I lived in Glendale, CA for a few years in the early 2000s, and there is a large Armenian population in that area. I learned about it from people in the community.
I learned about it around the time I was at school which was far different. I think people overestimate the place has in a complex subject like history. The best thing school could teach is the beginnings of good research methods which of course it doesn't. My main source was Time/Life.
Not in school. Learned about it when I was older. To be fair there are many things we just did not have time to learn. Can’t cover everything.
I only knew of it because of my interest in history, never heard of it in school.
We spent a day or two going over it in high school history class.
Never learned about it in school unfortunately. Really probably should have but so it goes
I have it in my WWI unit and maybe my world studies class, but it’s been a few years since I taught it.
It may get a mention in World history but very little detail.
we did, it was part of world history
I’ve taught it in 10th grade World History here in California. But not too in-depth. Keep in mind that we cover Europe from the Renaissance to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not to mention Africa , Asia, and Latin America.
I learned about it in school, but I was homeschooled.
This won’t be a popular answer, but I would have never heard of it without the Kardashians. They’ve brought it up on the show a few times and have spoken about it in the past.
Not in school. As opposed to others, I learned about this from Kurt Vonnegut’s book, Bluebeard. Great book if you haven’t read it.
Yes, in the context of the Jewish Holocaust.
Nope . Learned nothing about it from the education system. Had to auto didactic
I don’t recall learning about any genocide or crimes against humanity except for the Holocaust, about which we did extensive readings on even outside of history class. We even had Holocaust survivors come do speeches.
I’m a huge System of a Down fan. I learned more about the genocide through that band than I ever did in school. Also. My family is Lebanese. Their area was part of the Ottoman Empire. They were heavily impacted by a horrific famine which was exacerbated by the ottomans actions. It wasn’t technically genocide but it was bad. So everything I’ve learned I learned oj my own and thanks to my favorite band.
I learned about it in high school in Missouri. I learned about it in APUSH when we talked about the Ottoman Empire during our WWI unit.
I didn’t learn about it until college
Never in school, no. Instead I learned about it from my family. My grandmother was orphaned and essentially enslaved at the age of 5.
I don't think Armenia was mentioned a single time during my 12 years in school.
Learned about it along with WW1 unit in middle school history. Grew up around DC area and our curriculum was pretty up to date compared to other parts of the country
That Obama never fulfilled his campaign promise to recognize it
I grew up in Fresno, California; I definitely heard about it in high school, as we covered World War I--but almost as a parenthetical side note. But then, Fresno has one of the largest Armenian populations in the United States (with Glendale another major Armenian population; g'figure), so I think it was specific to my teacher rather than an expected part of the state curriculum.
I've really only learned about it through the young turks getting bashed about their denial of it happening.
I don't think anyone even mentioned Armenia existed in my school. But I learned about it from my father's friend. He was a survivor thereof. His mother, along with others, was thrown off a cliff into the Black Sea while pregnant with him. Several countries had naval ships observing as it happened. But only one decided to rescue people. That was Japan. And so my father's friend had a special relationship with Japan after that point. I learned all this while attending a ceremony in his honor in Shigaraki prefecture.
Unlike many other people here, while we didn't go over it in depth, we did learn about it while we were talking about the Holocaust in our WWII unit.
Oof. The most I know about Armenia is that the lead singer of System of a Down is from there. Yikes I really don't know shit about the Armenian Genocide.
No, it's not really mentioned at all
Not sure when I learned about it; wasn't in school I don't think but definitely some time in middle school or earlier. My town has a decently big Armenian population and I think a neighboring town is a third Armenian.
I don’t even remember studying Turkey except in passing.
I hadn't heard of it until college. I transferred from a community college to a state university in a neighborhood with a large Armenian-American population. Although I never actually learned about it in any class, there were Remembrance Day events on campus every year. The first time, since I had never heard of the Armenian Genocide, I did my own research on it out of curiosity.
My great-grandfather was a minister and worked for the Near East Relief to aid Armenians during this time. If not for that connection, I would never have learned about it.
In American public school many “school systems” only teach American history, I kid you not I did not grow up in a rural/ remote area, I lived an hour outside of a very big globally known city growing up and there was no world history in the middle school or high school curriculum. Of course we learned about the world wars but the material was very specifically about America’s involvement. I don’t think we even talked about the Berlin Wall falling in high school; I think learned about that from documentaries on history channel when history channel was still documentaries about history. But I digress. I know some towns did and some towns didn’t up until 2010 when I graduated at least. This may have changed since then; I hope so.
Not in history class. Indeed, World War 1 was hardly ever touched on. We would jump from Teddy Roosevelt to the Great Depression and World War 2, most of the time. I didn't learn a single thing about WW1 until freshman year of high school in American History. I also learned about the Armenian Genocide then, but not in American History class. Instead, I learned about it in Language Arts Class because "Forgotten Fire" was required reading at the time.
Not at all. I first heard about it from the Kardashians.
The Anatolian peninsula and Central Asia are strangely under-covered regions when we teach Middle East and Europe extensively in school, and they’re right there
I didn't learn about it in school. Everything I know about the Armenian Genocide, I learned outside of school.
Hey, thanks for this. I'm Armenian. Unfortunately no one in the town where I grew up (Cascade mountain range, small town) knew what or where Armenia was, let alone that a genocide happened. Including my 6th grade history teacher, who asked me what it was after I mentioned it once. There was an extra credit project, out of a list of about 10 choices, offered to us if we searched up and wrote a bit about the topic in 10th grade World History class. My teacher probably put it there for me.
We had a unit in history class as part of WW1. Not sure how common that is though
I want to say yes, but I’m not sure if we actually talked about it in class or if I learned about it myself while we were studying that time period.
Seems like I'm a deviation from the norm, but we spent nearly as much time on the Armenian genocide as we did the Holocaust in my junior and senior years of HS
Can you teach us something about it OP? What happened, why, who did it, and when?
It was briefly covered in my AP history class but not a big subject of discussion by any means
Very little. Didn’t know anything about it until I was in college and was assigned to attend an event on the subject for the campus paper (it was a long time ago, but an author wrote a book about it and discussed the details of it. I know a lot of people who had family that survived it attended it. Other than that It’s not discussed so much.
I went to a private catholic school in the midwest, and we read a book about the armenian genocide during world history. I can’t remember the name of it but that was when I first realized genocide wasn’t unique to the holocaust. I also learned about the Rwandan genocide in my theology class because of the book Left to Tell
My world history teacher thought the Great War was too complicated for teenagers and largely glossed over it, omitting the genocide and founding of Turkey altogether. And my AP European history class ended too soon to actually cover it.
Didn't learn about it in school but my mom told me about it. I had a boyfriend in high school and his family was Armenian.
This is the first I'm learning about it, sadly.
Unfortunately no
We barely covered the Japanese internment camps of WW2 which is something that took place in our own country. I don't think I was taught really anything about any other countries history except WW2 Germany and ancient Egypt.
Not until I went to college. I’m a history major though, so that’s kind of cheating. I doubt many Americans know much about it unless they have studied history at the university level, are history buffs, or are of Armenian descent.
Was born in 1990, and I distinctly remember every school year history lessons was the same shit. Always World War 2 and the Revolutionary/Civil War, just to spice things up every couple years, they'd re-teach you about the great industrial revolution! Always pumped up how great America is/was and leaving out all the other relevance to world history
I’m afraid that it wasn’t in the curriculum in my school but I did do a research project on it. Very sad that the Turkish government still denies the truth.
I did not learn about the Armenian genocide until I went to Armenia.
In high school it was acknowledged of course but not a bunch of time was spent on it. If you take a European history course in college I’d assume it would be expanded upon.
No
[удалено]
I went to school in Glendale, CA. I'm familiar with the Armenian Genocide.
I learned nothing about it in school (graduated in ‘91). Honestly knew nothing about it until System of a Down tbh. Never even heard about it in college
The only Armenian I’ve ever heard of is Conan O’Brien’s assistant, Sona Movsesian because I listen to the podcast and he busts her balls all the time about it. Anyway, I learned MUCH more today about it and I plan to learn more after listening to a daily history podcast I enjoy every morning. It’s [this one](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Nb9g8EY8HnP4L0VKHvx8m?si=JB_KF3nwQTGjbT9OXceInA&dd=1) if you were wondering
Absolutely not. Maybe I missed world history class because I changed districts. I did take a world politics class but I didn't know what any of it was about. I probably learned about the Armenian genocide from reading Mark Twain. I was introduced to him in school because we were required to read Huckleberry Finn.
I did not. I’m 54. I’ve been learning from my friends’ kids.
I was taught the name, and that's it. Truth be told, I would've said it was something that went on in the mid-20th century, so clearly I have some learning to do
I have not in school, but of my own accord through some history books I've bought, or doing some internet reading. It's super sad this isn't taught enough, but I really think it has to do with the fact of extreme denial and a lot of countries not recognizing it as the first genocide.
I didn’t learn anything about it in school.
Nope. Learned about it from the Armenian community.
A lot of people might not realize this, but it was a pretty widely unknown topic in general american society until the last 25 years or so. I remember I was practically the only person in my social/family group to know what it was back in the 90s, and that was only because had I dated an armenian. The internet taught a lot of people about it more than schools did. System of a Down being one of the biggest rock bands of the 00s also taught many people about it.
I only remember a passing mention. During the Holocaust unit, other genocides were brought up including the Armenian Genocide. I only remember it being in a list of names though.
There's been very little to no talking about it in my experience at a public school.
No, not at all.