Showing a Brit a Real American High School Curriculum 

I'm German and in 11th grade I did an exchange year in the US. Since I had to return to my regular curriculum after, I wanted to take French. When I told them I've already had 6 years of French at that time, they didn't even know what to do with me.

“I generally feel like Americans would benefit from something not American...” he sheepishly remarks. I concur!

I go to an American school, and I gotta say... dude you went to a wild school. Your graduation requirements are so so different! And your class offerings are much better funded than the highschool(s) I've attended! We didn't get any culinary or family development or any language but Spanish (No French, German, etc, but one of the schools I went to did have Mandarin, but you could only take it if you had it through elementary and middle school)! And music classes are NEVER individual instruments. I've never seen Piano I or Piano II on a course listing. And we're required to take as history: Global studies (modern geopolitical issues and geography), World history, and US history (1 year of each), + econ and US government. It's so weird that you didn't take full world history?

Wow, you went to a way better American H.S. than most of us get here. Room to take 17 electives? Hell, that 17 elective choices even exist in one school is wow! Our school district doesn't even have homec anymore.

The problem with saying "US education" is that nearly every state has different educational standards. Edit: I'm saying this not as a defense of the us system. It's one of the major reasons that's it's so bad in particular areas.

as a german, seeing the way school works in the US is so confusing with all the credits and stuff like we don't have that at ALL

I did English As A Second Language in primary school and then always came first in "normal" English because I was actually taught how English worked.

For the record, not all American high schools have drivers ed. I'm jealous tbh 😅 We just called it Technology but there was a woodshop class for people who actually knew what they were doing. In Technology, we worked a little with wood but most of it was playing a game called Bridge Builder on the computer and basic design drawings.

A- Where are you from? B- Oh I’m from Scotland A- Oh I love the Scottish accent! B- Oh no I’m from Scotland, South Dakota

Evan: "Naval Science" My brain: the science of belly buttons

Fun fact: In Austria you put a lot (a lot!) of emphasis in the two world wars (at least in my school) In my 7 years of lessons, we worked through the whole topic twice with almost 3/4 of a year just for WWII We really don't want to repeat what had happened when someone doesn't get accepted into our university of fine arts (it's still nearly impossible to get in though, but that's due to the almost one-on-one lessons about learning the specific techniques required for some of the courses)

I fly over to London for work in a weeks time, I was telling a friend about it last night… she was convinced London was in Paris France… as a pretty “die hard” American… it upsets me that our education system has failed so many in so many similar ways, I don’t know if I would ever necessarily want to live outside of where I’m from as I’m a very “home body” type of person who likes where I’m from, but I do want to travel the world and experience other countries and cultures and diversities within those nations, and not from a tourist perspective like “oh I have to go see Big Ben!” But from a working class pub and have conversations with locals about anything and everything

Americans: "Getting a driver's licence is expensive" Germany: *laughs in the background*

"I love my country, but we need to start seeing other people" - bumper sticker in US

This all sounds so very complicated. In the UK, you start the year, you're given a timetable of all your classes and you follow that timetable for the whole year. At a certain age, when certain subjects become optional, they'll ask you in advance which of the humanities subject you want to choose (usually people either pick history or geography) and which language you want to choose (usually a choice between German, French and Spanish) and that's it.

This was more "Showing a Brit how my highschool was at one school in one district in one area of one state in America" rather than showing a Brit how American highschool was in general. America is soo big, and so there are soo many different kinds of school, even within a single county. Funny video nonetheless! :)

Man, this guy's school was so well funded. My highschool didn't have half the extra curriculars and upper science courses he listed.

I have to say, only 1 year of "world language" sounds so strange to a European... when I graduated high school in France, I had studied English for over 9 years, and German for 7. Of course it makes sense for it to be different in the US, as you guys speak the universal language, but it sounds shocking! I think it's super cool that you can choose electives though!!

One year of foreign language is wild. We had at least 3 forgeign languages during our entire education. + Ancient Greek and Latin but that was optional. Languages was half of our education.

I always took pride that my high school offered Japanese and Latin as language courses, though I find it strange yours didn't at least have German. Spanish, French, and German were like the standard 3 languages that you could learn at any of the schools. Sadly I missed out on Latin, but I took 2 years of Japanese which was fun.

Corry: “When are we gonna learn Algebra?” Teacher: “We’re passed that... this is complex Calculus...”

Best highschool class I took was Forensic science. We solved fake crimes and calculated when people died using body temperature, rigor mortis, and maggots.

Our requirements were REALLY different. At my school, in NY, even the credits were calculated differently. I took Latin as a foreign language. A lot of your options were clubs for us. For band, it was just band (marching AND concert in one) and stuff like jazz band was an after-school activity.

I've only seen your school so far, but as a fellow American I am shocked by how relaxed the educational requirements in New Jersey are!!! My school you needed 4 years of English, 3 for Math 4 for Science and 4 years for History (2 US and 2 World) and we needed 3 years of a foreign language and 2 years of an art/music.

It’s Design and Technology where I’m from in the UK or Design Tech, covered everything from graphics and word work to electrical systems.

Interesting thing, you can literally tell where you are in the US by the language requirements. As you get close to the southern border, classes start to ramp up foreign language course requirements, and put more and more funding towards Spanish programs.

I love how hilarious Evan finds everything about Scotland High School in South Dakota... and how alternately bemused and offended Corrie is! 🤣

This honestly explains a lot. It’s so interesting to see how things are different.

"You don't really have enough history to warrant two years and not learning anyone else's history." Not only that, but by the time we get to high school it's about the sixth time we've gone over the same events, as it's the same history we're taught again and again in the lower grades - at a different depth, granted, but as a student it's so boring to go over the same dates and people over and over again. And then my community college required ANOTHER US history class as part of the basic curriculum requirements (just in case we missed the first 8 times I guess).

Disclaimer: all these electives are not offered in all public schools. These electives that he went through such as: Biomedical ethics, must be from High Schools located in middle and high class income areas in the USA.

It's interesting to see all of the differences between my highschool & these ones, for starters in 9th & 10th grade you take global, very very little about America but with a focus currently on Eurasia & the beginnings of civilization. Also, my school is very understaffed in the language department so the only language we get is spanish. We do also have a lot of art classes though which I am thankful for (even if its so hard to choose)

Class of 2022 here, so a senior.. I go to school in a relatively well funded district in SE Michigan. You need 4 years of ELA, 3 years of social studies (2 of those being American and World History, respectively, and 1 of them being split between Government and Economics), 4 years of math (divided by type of math), and 3 years of science, though if you take a special career center course in junior year you get to skip out on physics, like I did! 1/2 a year of art, and 2 years of foreign language are required, though if you take a whole lotta art you only need 1 year of that language.The Career Center is a special thing where it takes up 2 hours and you get bussed to this other building that all 3 high schools in the district share, where you get taught high-quality, very funded career oriented classes. Mine was graphic design, it was fun but very regimented. Not many people take career center which is a bit of a shame. They also offer a community service class, where you can help either elementary school kids, or the cognitive impairments program. I chose to help the cognitive impairments program because it's right in my school so I don't have to travel.

I'm Canadian, so about half my experience aligns with American schools and the other half seems more British. Like a swirly ice cream cone.

As the video goes on, the fear in Corry’s eyes grows EDIT: woah that’s a lot of likes

Your school was so well funded lmao our only foreign language was Spanish (only 2 courses) we only had one AP course offered and half the teachers were coaches who had no business teaching

I went to school in NY I had to take 4 years of Language, English, Math, Science, History. Also had to take Regents test which were state tests. We did study world history. We did not have all these electives. AP classes I took were hard because we had some crazy ass teachers who thought we should take extreme writing intensive classes while taking all the other courses we had.

"Could I take Scots, maybe? Is that one of the languages there?" "I don't believe they know that's a language." 😂

The fact that there’s a Scotland, South Dakota reminds me about a great bit of trivia about American and Canadian geography. There’s a New Jersey, New Brunswick in Canada, and a New Brunswick, New Jersey in America. I found that out when I told someone that I was from northern New Brunswick, and they thought I lived in New Jersey.

I'm British but I live in the US and this was so helpful. So many conversations make so much more sense lol

Corry: American history takes two years? How? Me: I took two separate years of US history and they spent so much time making us memorize useless dates, we only got to about 1900 when the school year ended. Both times.

That fact your school had money for all of those electives is amazing. I’m from Oklahoma and our public schools cut all funding for the arts electives but didn’t for the sports programs.

I'm perplexed at the description of physical science that you gave lol I always learned it was like the science of inanimate things like rocks, geology, earth science type stuff??

So your video got me looking and at the high school went to, they require 2 years/semesters (when I went we had accelerated block scheduling so classes were done at Christmas break then in May, not sure if that’s still the case) of the same foreign language, and offer Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, French and German. The offer Spanish for native speakers as well. There is a world geography option under social studies. Things have changed a lot since I graduated.

"We do a lot of foreign languages" : 3 years. In France, the minimum for many people is 7 years of English and 6 years of another language (Spanish, German...). Many people even learn a 3rd language in high school. And I don't think we're the most extreme country. It's just that 3 years of a single language is nothing

It’s so crazy watching Evan say “well in US schools.....” and then he says something I’ve never encountered in my whole life as an American 😂 what are they up to in NJ???

It’s easier to choose what you want in the UK because you have to do almost everything the school has to offer for 3 years before you choose your options

13:40 same energy as when I was writing a Vampire short story for class and told my prof it's set in Transylvania County, NC.

"Do they have to learn Scots?" "I don't believe they know it's a language" I almost spit my coffee.

totally missed opportunity: how much wood would a wood tech tech if a wood tech could tech wood?

I went to a college prep school for my first two years in HS, then transferred to public school. The requirements for graduation were so wildly different that when I got to my new school I’d already gotten my credits for history and science so I just took electives like culinary and even raised a pig for one class it was so much fun.

Our school offered French, Spanish, Latin, and German as electives (only the first year was mandatory, and you could pick). We also had four different choirs (some of which you had to pass an audition for), as well as orchestras/bands, that would annually travel out-of-state to perform in competitions.

“Then we showed up and everything was good again” sums up all of the American history I’ve ever been taught....

My favourite quote, Ambrose Bierce: “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography."

UK here and while it's been a while since I was in the school system, When I was being educated, our equivalent to the US woodwork/workshop would have been "DT - Design Technology", but this was a bit different, for us each year you would choose one of 3 possible options to take for your DT lesson, either Workshop - Woodwork, plastics moulding, CNC machining or Home Economics - Cooking, Craftwork, Materials work or lastly Graphics design - CAD design and production and product design and marketing. Generally speaking, the 3 classes would work on crossover projects throughout the year with the Graphics design class designing things to be produced by the other two classes.

Wow makes me realize how many courses our HS offers along with clubs in our little WA town. Our school also offers running start programs for college credit once you hit your junior year and has Honors and AP courses in English, Science, Math and History. My oldest was able to take 3rd yr science classes as a freshman and has continued taking them even staking her extra curricular with more science as thats what she wants to major in and they allow it. I guess it's different at each school.

"American TV shows are making so much sense now" same

"Lady courses!?" There was more guys in my Food Tech class than women when I was in school so not sure what you're on about with lady classes.

I graduated in 2003 and in my small MO town we had American History Frosh year (but we talked about a lot of things in the world that affected the events in the US) - my teacher also made us memorize about 30 world leaders and they countries they came from, US govt Soph year (and you had to pass the Constitution test - which was at least a state if not national requirement), and then I took Advanced World Hist (this went all the way back to the beginnings of civilization) for college credit junior year and Adv Am History senior year (again with a lot of info on what was happening around the world at that time). English was the same frosh & soph year (Eng 1&2) and then there were a variety you could take Junior & Senior year. Math you had to take algebra and geometry before you could take algebra 2, Advanced Math, and Calculus. Science also followed a route of pre-reqs before you could take physics or chem 2. I didn’t get to take a lot of fluff classes.

(U.S. - New Mexico) We didn't have as many elective options, but being adjacent to the reservation it was pretty cool that we had a Navajo language class offered. When I went there was film studies and drawing (side courses taught by an English teacher and a Social studies teacher.) Theater, band, choir. Dance class mostly for the drill team, and I think they had weight training for the athletes on the school teams. Interesting that these courses could be taught during school hours yet jazz band and swing choir had to be zero-hour. Marching band got PE credit and there was summer PE offered at one point where you could do bowling. We had to have two semesters of language (on block schedule which is 2 hour classes.) Driver's Ed was a summer thing not affiliated with the school. What else... yearbook, also a business class that ran the concession stand at lunch, woodshop, home economics was only offered in mid-school, some kids were office aids, the Gifted and Talented doing whatever they did in that room... and the GUILD class where you got to do an apprenticeship with a professional in the community of your career interest. We did have to have world history (and New Mexico history in mid-school.) We got to dissect cats and go to a cadaver lab for AP Anatomy. Not a high-income area. Snow days for a light dusting of snow! (The rez gets muddy)

us schools are so confusing with this credit stuff, and when they say stuff like "this guy is from my english class" im so confused cuz we just go to school with the same exact class that we had since day 1 with the same people for 11 years and we all go to the same lessons that we didn't pick whatsoever also most subjects we have every year

Remember, too, that curriculum and options are also affected by the socio-economic status of the school district. It seems that Evan's high school provided many options and that is not going to be reflected in every school district. I've lived in big urban cities and rural areas, both of which had schools severely lacking resources. *edit*: further, some school districts are in very religious counties and the education system reflects this in science and health curricula (at the very least).

Your high-school was so much better than mine. Small town America here- we didn't even have half of what you listed in the curriculum by 2012. I'm so jealous.

I'm from Washington State, not South Dakota, but my high school team was the Highlanders too. We had a pipe band, a drum corps, a highland dance troop, and everything. It wasn't common but also not unheard of for people to walk around in kilts, and our yearbook was called the Sporran.

What’s ironic is that in the two years of US History we don’t even learn a comprehensive amount of slavery, Native American history, American women’s history, minority studies in America, anything like that. So when you do get to college you think you have a good foundation of history for the country you live in and then you realize you’ve basically been lied to by process of omission for 12 years.

YOU ONLY HAD TO TAKE THREE YEARS OF MATH???? i wish edit: wasn’t expecting this much interaction! at my school you need 4 math credits to graduation (i’m american btw)

This is really interesting, very generalised comment and a personal opinion but I now realise how the Americans I meet seem highly confident and are good speakers, might be down to all the visual and performing arts focus and confidence building electives, although the depth of their knowledge on the basics is sometimes lacking, but the variety on offer is amazing I’d love it ! 😁 Great conversation guys you obviously did well at school! 🙂🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇬🇧 ps I love the teasing, 😂 particularly on the history! Love the Scotland school, as a Scot bless them.

This is very interesting. The electives sound great! It seems like the aim is a more well-rounded education (with electives like cooking, music, animation, driving etc) which in theory at least is a good idea imo. I'd say doing more world history and languages is something that gives european schools a leg up. I'm from south europe and we did do a lot more history and languages. Maybe the better solution is somewhere in the middle.

'this year were doing trigonometry' What the heck? We did that shiz in 2 weeks!

7:44 my brain heard “navel science” and i wondered how you can learn so much about belly buttons that it becomes a whole subject

as a person who went to high school a town over from where evan grew up taking photography was an amazing class to take

In the 80's, my public HS in the Chicago suburbs had PE every day for all 4 years (something schools today have cut back on to save money.) With 2,000 kids taking it every day, we had lots of fun options to choose like cross country skiing and orienteering in addition to the usual swimming, basketball, weightlifting, etc. But the rest was similar to your HS. One of my electives was sewing and I made a fully lined, tailored, wool blazer the 3rd year. My oldest son did a Culinary Arts program at a Technical High School for half the day. They had a restaurant that served lunch. His last year, he got 6 weeks as head chef including creating the menu. My youngest son did the IT certification program at the Tech HS and got a job right out of school. But my kids needed US history in High School because they went to elementary/Junior high school in England and Norway and only learned the history of those countries. Thank you to the person who mentioned that the written history of North America began more than 200 years ago. Our classes start with when it was discovered (Vikings in 1021 / Columbus in 1492) and really gets going once the English settled in Jamestown in 1607.

How is there less Maths than PE???

"We get to mess around with biomedical ethics" Hey Evan, just remind me NEVER to get healthcare from anyone who went to a New Jersey high school

At my school we took 2 years of a foreign language, we had a class called life facts which was a precursor to early developmental/fashion design/cooking classes. In the cooking classes one of the teachers made us took the food handlers card test and i took a class that required me to have a job to pass the class so i got out of school early

Same as a lot here, we had World History 1&2 and Western Lit 1&2 as requirements. We had less electives, but a lot of options. For languages, we had Spanish, French and Latin, and you had to take 1&2. They have since added Mandarin. We also had World Geography as a requirement.

To clarify: Agriculture is farming. Landscaping is planning lawns, gardens parks and stuff.

I feel like something that wasn’t really touched on at all is that American education and college admissions is really focused on extracurricular activities, whereas British schools don’t even have extracurriculars on their applications. So the American curriculum might look a lot easier, but for more ambitious students, it’s supplemented by a lot of demanding clubs and competitions and other activities. Edit: Sorry, to clarify, I didn't mean that British schools don't have extracurriculars, just that the UCAS application doesn't involve listing extracurriculars and British universities don't focus on it in admissions, whereas extracurriculars are really important in the US Common App and admissions process.

You guys crackin' me up 🤣

I'm from Jersey too! Ocean township didn't have all those fancy classes when I graduated in '95😳

Wait, so Americans didn't make a volcano cake in year 7 for geography homework?? Crazy

The American system both makes complete sense, but also baffles me at the same time.... ... .. . Brain...what?

5:46 We call it Industrial Tech, shop, or in my school we refer to it as production

I’m Brazilian and my school had a lot of extracurriculars, waaaaaaay above the national average. Some of the ones I participated in were classes for astronomy and linguistic academic Olympics, as well as Korean and something that I guess you could call Media Production? (Some basic video editing and Storytelling studies, mostly)

This explains why Bella's class schedule in Twilight only seemed to have Biology and no other science! I genuinely always wondered about that, like, when do they study physics and chemistry?!

I don't get why everything is so specific in the us school system. In the UK we just pick general subjects to do for gcse (ie geography, art, music) and then we cover specific subjects within that. Everyone needs to do maths English science as well

One of the things I noticed going to school in Southern California was many times the quality of education depended on the teachers. I went to a somewhat mixed school. Most students lived below poverty and gangs ran rampant. There were other students that were very well off. (Or at least they were from appearances). I had so many teachers that wouldn’t give up on their students. They encouraged them to learn, find subjects the students were passionate about and set goals. They always encouraged us to change our own future. Considering it was free, I think I got a great education and learned many important life skills. I changed my future and it was because of my teachers encouragement. I’m not saying the system functions well. I’m not saying that, considering the amount of public taxes spent on schools, the system shouldn’t be better. There is also a huge difference between schools in more wealthy areas and those schools in more poverty stricken areas. This was a great piece! I have been trying to understand how the British education system works. Can’t wait to see the next video!!!

When I went to high school in the 1970s, we had 3 levels/tracks of classes based on aptitude - remedial, general, college prep. I took the college prep track. 3 years of history/social studies: civics (government), world history, US History. 4 years of math: algebra 1, algebra 2, geometry, advanced algebra and trigonometry. 3 years of science: general, biology, chemistry. 1 year of foreign language: Spanish (French & German were also available). The electives I can remember taking were drivers' ed, creative writing, forestry and typing. Music & arts were available as electives but I had taken strings (violin) in 5th & 6th grade and it wasn't available where I went to high school (different state). There were vocational courses that were aimed at teaching kids a trade. That covered auto mechanics, woodshop, welding, home economics (cooking related), and some advanced office skills (no computers back then so think advanced typing, dictation, stenography). Nowadays, locally, there is certainly way more variety and advanced subjects available. But the "learn a trade" courses seem to have faded away which is unfortunate because not everyone can cut it in college or is able to go. But Mike Rowe can speak more to that than I can.

“I have fired many, many… guns” that is the literal most American thing I have heard from a non-American. Edit: The funniest part about the comment is that it was entirely a joke and a substantial amount of Americans don’t own guns or want to. I myself have never even fired a Nerf gun, my mom said they were “too violent” and would “corrupt my innocent soul.”

"You have to take 9 courses." Laughs in east European.

My California high school doesn't have a woodshop, film, dance, entrepreneurship, home ec, or driver's ed class. We had a "foods" class that was a mix of nutrition and restaurant management, theatre, choir, computer science, band, the classics you know, but none of that super fancy stuff. We also had an agreement with the local community college where juniors and seniors can take off-campus college courses for stuff like film, ASL, veterinary science, etc (counted for both HS and college credit), but it's like two steps above AP classes and an extra hour of class every day.

All of these electives are so much more helpful and just so much MORE cuz all we have is theater, choir, sports, painting things, two options for language, and more math.

At my high school the NHS was actually, like, A THING. We were expected to keep the honor by doing 50 hours of community service around the district.

That history bit is funny. In my 13 years of school in Germany, I had 2 years of modern German history (basically half a year of anything leading up to the founding of a unified German state, half a year of the Empire and WWI, half a year of Weimar Republic and WWII and half a year of Cold War/Reunification) and 7 years of just general European and world history. There is just so much more emphasis on the world in general (though I feel like you still miss out on a lot of history of the Americas and Asia).

my school in the UK has a "woodshop" where we did wood work and metal work, making things like trowels and stuff, I took it for my GCSE, made a circular birdhouse and got an A... my school called it "Resistant materials" but as a whole, it also included other things like textiles and stuff, so as a category of subject, it was often called "design technology"

Come to fairfax county in Virginia. The curriculum is wide across the 3 main school systems (elementary, middle, and high school). Of course we got all the basics like your school but I'd say we also have a little bit more to offer as well.

The american high school system is as hard as you want it to be, you have a lot of freedom and if you stack up on AP classes it will be significantly harder than regular classes.

9 courses a year! That’s it! In the UK I had to take at least like 14 courses that I can think of for the first 3 years and then 11 for my GCSEs and that’s not including the short courses I had to take alongside it!

This varies state to state, remember. In New York where I’m from we have reagents courses and reagents exams. The reagents are standardized tests that all New York high schoolers must take to get a reagents diploma. (basically just a high school diploma) I was lucky enough to take a high school level science in middle school so I have the credit for that class and the required reagent. If I had failed the reagents exam, I’d have had to take that class again. Also, he said you only had to take 1 year of a language at his school, but in New York it varies. I took Spanish in elementary (primary) school and decided to switch to italian in middle school. Because I switched to Italian in middle school and didn’t continue with Spanish, I have to take 3 years of Italian in high school. I have friends who stayed with Spanish and they only have to do 1. But it is highly encouraged to take another language class and you can take multiple at the same time. Next year I’m taking both Italian and Japanese in the same year. The amount of years you have to take in each subject vary school to school and student to student. I know kids who take creative coding instead of health and get the same credits just slower. There are kids who are put in applied geometry and have to take 2 years of geometry instead of one. American high school isn’t the same state to state or even town to town. Edit: also not all schools with large esl programs get a lot of funding and if they do, it’s often put into the wrong places. My mom is an esl teacher in nyc and her school is poor. Many of their students are from Yemen and other countries and they haven’t been in school for years because of war. Most of them only know how to say “hello. It is hot today. Goodbye.” when they arrive in America. Their school does not have good funding and the only appeal of it is that they have a good football team.

My US university was also home of the Highlanders, purely because we were situated against some hills. Our walk around mascot was just a bear, though (Scottie), who usually wore a basketball jersey but sometimes wore a kilt. We did have a pipe band (you could often hear Scotland the Brave being screeched across campus) and an official tartan. I took a course on The Music of Scotland. Not gonna lie, part of my reason for picking the school was the Scottish connection (they actually did have some connection to the University of Stirling). They also had the only Creative Writing major in California.

Oooh Evan do a History GCSE exam like the maths and English one!