In my country,I believe the major factor would be regionalism. If your nation has historical ties to a particular country, then studying the history of that country would take priority as it would also help you understand your own nation's past.Remember, National history always seems to take priority and world history is viewed as an addition. So,yeah, it can get rather frustrating. The fact that I can name every single dynasty that ever ruled Iran, but didn't know who the Qing were till after graduation tells you a lot. I actually have my 11th grade history textbook with me( which covers both national and world history till the early 19th century) so I can give you a brief overview of what I studied(I removed the chapters dedicated to national history to make things simple):

Part 1: Origin of Man-not too bad,but overall doesn't really explain the out of africa hypothesis really well.

Part 2: The Ancient World-Egypt,Sumer, Babylon,Acamenid Persian Empire, Phoenicians,Greeks, Alexander,Rome

Part 3:Middle Ages- rise of christianity,fall of Rome,Pope, Feudalism

Part 4: Middle East- Rise of Islam and the Arab conquests,Seljuks, crusades,Mongols, Timur, Rise of the Ottomans and fall of Constantinople

Part 5: Renaissance, Age of exploration,Colonization of the Americas, Protestant Reformation, 30 year war,the Dutch revolution gets a separate chapter for some reason, English Civil War, Seven Years War, Enlightenment, American Revolution, and of course The French Revolution ( which gets four chapters) Part 6: more Ottomans, Rise of Safavids, Russia, Poland(this part is almost exclusively dedicated to regional politics, so don't mind the anachronism.)

Overall, heavy regional bias,but not as bad as my medical history textbook, which is basically fascist propaganda( ok, I might be a bit exaggerating,but generally college textbooks aren't regulated by the government so they can get away with whatever pseudohistory they want)

Hi there! You’ve asked a question along the lines of ‘why didn’t I learn about X’. We’re happy to let this question stand, but there are a variety of reasons why you may find it hard to get a good answer to this question on /r/AskHistorians.

Firstly, school curricula and how they are taught vary strongly between different countries and even even different states. Additionally, how they are taught is often influenced by teachers having to compromise on how much time they can spend on any given topic. More information on your location and level of education might be helpful to answer this question.

Secondly, we have noticed that these questions are often phrased to be about people's individual experience but what they are really about is why a certain event is more prominent in popular narratives of history than others.

Instead of asking "Why haven't I learned about event ...", consider asking "What importance do scholars assign to event ... in the context of such and such history?" The latter question is often closer to what to what people actually want to know and is more likely to get a good answer from an expert. If you intend to ask the 'What importance do scholars assign to event X' question instead, let us know and we'll remove this question.

Thank you!