There are lots of ways to look at it, so the question as you put it isn't an easy one to answer.

On the one hand, a lot of education, including history, is notoriously unengaging even when the topic itself is fascinating. Unfortunately, a lot of teachers have a knack for making even things like WWII far less captivating for students than it was for combatants, and that's not the kids fault.

On the other hand, while rebellious juvenile disinterest in and disrespect for everything they feel their elders foolishly but falsely consider important is inevitable in every generation, that doesn't excuse it. Parents and educators can only do so much to attract and hold the attention of kids contemptuous of values and priorities dismissed as outmoded and obsolete.

Most of the time neither educators nor students fit neatly into such broad generalizations. I had a few bad history teachers in school reduce the Age of Discovery and the Renaissance to the most tedious rote memorization of names, dates and places; more common were good history teachers whose other students regularly thanked me for engaging them in detailed discussion of some pivotal historic event for the entire class period and thereby allowing my fellow students to enjoy their walkman, hit on each other and generally avoid learning anything for an hour. The system isn't perfect, and teachers have to make an effort to engage often apathetic students by any means necessary; those who don't make the effort get the bulk of the blame for not trying, but those who do can't force their students to care about the subject.

All of THAT said, I'm not sure anything teenagers are old enough to remember if they weren't too busy with more important trivia qualifies as "recent history". That seems closer to "current events", or at least recent events. Getting back to my subject line, I think the rule of thumb should be that if the person who murdered thousands in the middle of your country is still out there trying to murder you and anyone else they can find, it's not history. More importantly, anyone with more important things to do than pay attention to the international group trying to murder them has a great chance of being murdered, not without notice, just without noticing.