My favorite of the programs, besides Chinese, was the blended English/History program - two hours in which we learned about writers of the times that we were studying in history, and got to put on plays and stuff...

That is exceedingly nifty. A lover of mine went to a conservatory, and mentioned to me once that she was taught all about the music of Mozart and Bach and Vivaldi and Tchaikovsky (or however we're spelling him in English these days), but nothing about the history or literature surrounding that music. (I had allowed as how a conservatory must have offered a reasonable amount of history and literature, and she said I'd be surprised.)

The arbitrary division of knowledge into school subjects has always struck me as a bit odd.