Was on wikipedia flicking through some random articles when I noticed that every year in one article was carefully notated as BCE or CE when most don’t bother with that and just use numbers when referring to stuff after 0. And that got me wondering, considering that all education is up to states and districts… what’s being taught now and how were you taught? Learned my calendars as BC/AD. What about you all?

25 comments
  1. Jewish schools aren’t dating anything by an anno domini we don’t believe in. So, BCE/CE.

  2. I learned stuff as BC/AD and didn’t see CE until the past 10-15 years.

    I get why people would shy away from AD, as the *domini* in *anno domini* is a theological claim, but there’s no reason to change BC. We count years from the birth of Christ and if you don’t like that, go ahead and start your own world religion. But don’t hide behind euphemisms like “common era.”

  3. Well I was homeschooled with a Christian curriculum, so guess.

    But in my college history courses I believe it was still BC/AD.

  4. When are we gonna come up with a new age to classify time that is past? Are we always gonna use BC/AD or BCE/CE? Will we only change it after a new globally significant event?

  5. I only remember it being mentioned once, in like 1st grade or something. Teacher in a public school taught us “before Christ/after death. After that I don’t remember what my teachers used. I’ve heard both a million times but I don’t think I questioned it until I was about 25.

  6. BC/AD. First time I heard BCE/CE was in a college art history class around 2002.

  7. BC/AD but i went to school in the 20th century.

    BC and AD sound way better than the clunky BCE and CE so I like Lindybeige’s solution of just changing what BC and AD stand for (BC = ‘backwards chronology’ because 200 happened before 100, AD = ‘advancing dates’)

  8. I really don’t remember being taught BC & AD, but I recently heard someone say like, 59 CE on a podcast, and I had no idea what they were talking about. I had to google. It comes up surprisingly little in real life outside of school, apparently.

  9. I learned ~~AC/DC~~ BC/AD and only started seeing CE within the last 10-15 years.

  10. Almost exclusively BC/ AD, but I had classmates who consciously chose to use BCE/CE as a sort of protest against using a timeline anchored by an event in a religion they don’t believe in.

  11. BC/AD, I went to Catholic school, they did teach the terms BCE and CE as well, just BC and AD were always used.

  12. BCE/CE is what we used in Hebrew School. BC/AD is what we used in public school.

  13. I read a lot of history outside of school, so I saw both BC/AD and BCE/CE in history books from a very young age. I do remember that our school got new textbooks in…. Oh, I think 2007ish, and our social studies teacher had a lesson toward the beginning of the year about different calendar systems between cultures and over time and explained why the new textbooks used BC/BCE, so I know the old middle school social studies textbooks didn’t.

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like