My son is starting his freshman year at the local, progressive public school. His required history course is World History.
I post this to get general discussion about whether this is the right concept of history to be taught to freshman (14-year-olds), and specific discussion about this course, and if it seems geared towards reaching a particular political viewpoint (not Dem v. Rep, but progressive v. anything else).
For me, I think the course description is designed to reach a progressive view of the world (and maybe an illiberal one, at that) and that this is too much historiography and too little actual history for 14-year-olds. Contra the course description, I actually do want my freshman to learn as much about the history of the world as you can pack into 176 days--he and his classmates haven't learned that yet, so they have nothing to "unlearn." I'm already looking for supplementation (if anyone has any they could recommend, that would be great).
Here's the description of the course from the syllabus (all emphasis in the original):
COURSE DESCRIPTION
The focus on this course is not to learn as much as we can about as much of the history of the world as we can fit into 176 school days. Rather, this course offers a narrower focus, on that synthesizes select historical periods, themes, and ideas throughout human history in an attempt to craft an argument. Because that's what history is: an argument about the past. And to engage in an earnest study of World History requires us to ask historical questions -- questions to which there are no "answers," only evidence-based arguments.
In World History A, we will explore a number of essential questions that will guide our units of study, both in what we ask you to consume as budding historians (readings, film, art, music, and other modes of expression) and in how we assess you throughout the year. These questions may include:
1. Why and for whom does history matter?
2. How do we know what we know about the world and can we trust it?
3. What are the origins of inequality?
4. To what extend did religions and empires improve human life?
5. How did religion, trade, and empire unify the Old World System?
6. How should the early American empires be remembered? What story should be told about their historical significance?
7. How important was the European Age of Exploration? How much changed as a result?
8. How "enlightening" was the Enlightenment? To what extent did the Haitian Revolution challenge the global order?
9. Is progress inherently good? What were the global impacts of industrialization, imperialism, and nationalism?
10. How and why did liberal democracy decline in Germany after World War I? How and why did the Holocaust happen? Why did war (World War II) break out in the Pacific?
11. How and why did anti-colonial movements succeed in the post-war era?
In answering these questions--and these are just the ones we've come up with; you'll be creating questions of your own!--we will challenge some of our own preconceived notions about the history of the world --to unlearn some of what we have learned in hopes of broadening our perspective, deepening our fund of knowledge, and enhancing our critical thinking skills.
COURSE OUTLINE
Semester 1
Unit 1: Introduction to World History/Perspectives in World History
Unit 2: Agricultural Revolution
Unit 3: Collective Myths: Empire in the Ancient World
Unit 4: Empires in the Old World
Unit 5: Empire in the Americas
Semester 2
Unit 6: Global System and the Rise of the West
Unit 7: Egalite for all? Enlightenment and Revolution in the Atlantic World
Untie 8: The Paradox of Progress: The Industrial Revolution, Imperialism, and World War I
Unit 9: World War II and the Holocaust
Unit 10: Decolonization Movements
Brad thanks for including me but as said by others, this is way beyond what I experienced and makes me think of what my standard history classes were like growing up in Bedford and graduating from BNL in the late 80's.
This syllabus reminds me, as mentioned before, more along my humanities courses I had at IU. So I'm personally relieved that this kind of offering is made available to high schoolers again from personal experience in that the Humanities classes made 100 times more of a connection than my public schooling did. Most of the time it bored me and hardly connected. Humanities classes were more like sociology classes than memorizing dates, but they better explained why our country reacts the way it does to things and why it likely led to the decisions that were made.
To me that's what I believe learning history is about. The understanding of how and why things are that they are. Why decisions were made and the intent behind them ...leaving it up to myself to determine if it was a logical decision and if the intent was good natured or pure competitive thinking.
For example Eugenics is a fascinating story and one, which I had no idea, took a hold of the country in the early 1900's. Basically the rich and powerful believed our future society should be developed in the same manner that we breed animals. Got to the point that you and your wife took a test (created by some old powerful white dude) and got placed into groups. If you were determined a moron, you and all of your kids were sterilized because like breeding, we don't want to pass that trait on.
Anyway what I didn't know was that the state of Indiana was a massive leader of the eugenic philosophy. In 1907 we were the first state to pass a law that legalized the mass sterilization of determined social misfits. Which is horrific to consider but it led to insane amounts of sterilizations of blacks, Hispanics, native Americans which obviously took out generations of people, etc. Sterilization excuses went into the 70's before it was finally eliminated to my understanding.
Anyway, I'm going way too long on the Eugenic popular philosophy that semi originated from Indiana that I had no idea about until my humanities classes in college. But it helps better understand why things seem to be how they are and allows me to be a better problem solver and much better understand why things are.
To me that's my ultimate purpose of teaching history. It's not about indoctrinating a belief, it's all about learning why and how things happened to make us better equipped to be problem identifiers and problem solvers in the current environment that we live in.
Reminds me of the Floyd riots and arguments. I live in the Twin Cities and obviously there were water cooler level arguments vs discussions. For me I went back to my IU humanities classes where the creation of the Black panther party and why was an interesting history lesson and it's all about the feeling and fear of police brutality on the black community. Learned about the Chicago lake shore riot in the early 1900's to the Watt's riot to the Rodney King riot, etc. All of these blow ups are because a society believes a certain about the creation and institution of police roles. That's where we need to help solve a problem. Anyway, my point was basically why were people surprised after an incident that was first publicly reported from the police as a minor incident (which ended up being a blatant CYA public disclosure) only to have the videos of it hit the web.
It was a situation that the community firmly believes they are in and we've seen uprising over this type of situation many times. In other words, why were so many people surprised? As much as I wasn't surprised by some of the responses defending the cop response.
It's historically been presented multiple times.
When are the deep thinking problem solvers going to properly and creatively come up with a remedy to this because, history shows us it will light up again as it has since slavery was outlawed and the share croppers formed the original police forces.
Sorry, way too long of a ramble but to me again, that's the value that history teaches us. How things came to be but leaves myself with the ability to personally judge it from understanding why.
?
