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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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! :)