I think one problem that many K-12 teachers face is time. There is a limited amount of time to teach kids about this or that, and teachers and those who devise curricula have to make tough choices about what gets included and what doesn't. Sometimes teachers can't even cover all the material before the AP/IB tests in May! I'll give you an example: when I was in high school my APUSH teacher only got to the mid-1960s before the AP test. The big essay question happened to be on Nixon's China policy. Being the history geek/buff that I was who had done independent reading, I was the only one in my class even able to write the essay! But my history teacher wasn't a bad teacher. She spent a ton of time on the Civil Rights movement for instance, which I enjoyed, and she couldn't have necessarily known that the essay would be on the only decade covered that she had yet to get to.

The point being: we already ask K-12 teachers to cover a lot. And worse, for a lot of students their high school years will be the last time they ever encounter formal history education, so what is being taught really matters! Going into more intimate detail about the battles of Civil War may force a teacher to glide over Reconstruction. Going heavy on Reconstruction (which often gets the shaft, frankly put) may mean there's not enough time to discuss adequately what the Progressive movement was about. And this is just talking about survey high school courses!

To answer your question directly, I personally did not leave APUSH with a great grounding in the politics of the founding. I didn't really understand the stakes of the Federalist vs Democratic-Republican debates, or still later why Jackson was such a controversial president. We covered it, but not in sufficient detail or depth. It was only years later in university that I developed more of a sense of what those early years were really about politically. That being said, I loved learning about the Cold War in high school, especially post-war US foreign policy, and I was very lucky to go to a high school that covered a lot of Cold War topics. That's something I hope other students around the country are getting. Internationally, I think the French Revolution is absolutely essential, arguably more than the American. How you get from Napoleon to Metternich, the Revolutions of 1848, Bismarck, and the lead-up to WWI is fascinating stuff that every student should have the privilege to learn about (my favorite book on the lead-up to WWI is Donald Kagan's On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace). And you've also got to cover the Meiji Restoration, the rise of Japan, and the Bolshevik revolution to have a sense of why the 20th century plays out as it does. That's just my two cents!

Well, I could speak for hours on the American education system and its treatment of history, but this most certainly isn't the place to hop on my soapbox about that. So instead I'll address your second premise and suggest that you research whatever interests you most. I know that sounds obvious, but what I mean by that is frankly the best method of furthering your knowledge is to follow down the rabbit holes your research takes you into. Find a topic, read about it online or in a book, when something tangential to that topic catches your eye, start researching that, etc.

Obviously it's easy enough to find things about history online, but a good place to start looking for more academic sources would be to search for "college history syllabus". That brings up tons of old syllabi archives where you can get a sense for what books and topics are being studied in a university setting.

Interestingly the first one that popped up for me was the University of Wisconsin's, and it's quite a robust and well-organized example. There are numerous different courses and topics listed, and some courses have examples dating back to the 70s so you can even see how the trends of history have changed (aka historiography, essentially the history of the study of history - itself a fascinating topic).

Anyway, I hope this helps. Good luck furthering your studies!

Something I recently researched (actually because of something I read on Reddit) was the magna Carta. I had heard the words before, but it was not something they taught me anything about in school. I only scratched the surface but I find it extremely fascinating, and also somewhat relevant to the current political climate...

If you do look into it, let me know what you think

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 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 experiences 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 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!