Not really, I lean pretty hard into the 'never use the term Dark ages in my hearing' approach, and focus on the growth in the 11th-12th C. I do shock the heck out of them when I start the Black Death though - I have them write ten names of people they know, then have them cross off seven of them at random. I then say 'now imagine all those people died in the last year. Welcome to the Black Death!' I knocked them back a bit, but in a way they seem to get a charge out of. We do have one teacher who goes full into the torture stuff though - there really is no concrete curriculum for History/Social Studies.