What I found interesting is the emphasis on H.S. History as the study of the founding fathers. My son is taking regular US History in California. Clearly our requirements for the class are different with Texas requirements. Regular US History in CA if officially from Reformation (post Civil War) to present time. They are doing a unit of "review" to start but don't even taken much time on the Civil War. The assumption is that students learned about Colonial times through Civil War in 8th grade and 5th grade. Do kid in Texas not learn about U.S. History before H.S?
A U.S. history course taught to bright and motivated high school juniors and seniors can cover topics of greater difficulty and with greater depth than courses in 5th and 8th grade. I doubt that the 8th graders are closely reading the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers, for example.
