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The presented study finds its relevance in the issue that history teachers face countless choices when planning their teaching about the European periodization. The study aimed to investigate what teachers choose to teach about in the European periodization, what processes of change and elaboration teachers choose to teach about, how the choices teachers make differ in the history courses 1a1 and 1b, and how teachers’ reason about and motivate the choices they make. This was examined through qualitative interviews with four history teachers who teach/taught in the history courses 1a1 and 1b at the upper secondary school. The analysis was based on these three functions of education: socialisation, subjectification, and qualification. Furthermore, the study aimed to analyze how the functions correlated with the teachers' reasoning about what they choose to teach regarding the European periodization to demonstrate what function the teachers' reasoning had for the students. One overarching conclusion drawn from the study is that when teaching about the European periodization, teachers choose to teach about processes of change and elaboration that clarifies to students why the world function as it does today. Teachers choose to teach about processes of change and elaboration that they believe are interesting for the students and not things they themselves are interested in. The choices teachers make in history 1a1 and history 1b differ in that there are fewer elaboration aspects and more overview in history 1a1 than in history 1b, which may result in the history teaching in history 1a1 being somewhat deficient.