Description
This selection is for spring semester only.
History is often relegated to basic recall—names, dates, and places repeated, quizzed, and listed in objective fill-in-the-blank timelines that are cold and impersonal. Sometimes the stories themselves are allowed to breathe life into the endless line of facts, but those stories are too often anecdotal and disjointed. What would it be like to study history as a spiraling connection of themes joined together by common roots and shared destinations? Let’s find out!
First we will learn how to best read, process, and assess nonfiction texts, including both primary and secondary sources. Using that important skill, we will study the world’s events by making connections, contextualizing, and evaluating. We will identify and select historical data to explain and interpret its meaning, analyzing and manipulating its patterns so we can ultimately extrapolate and assemble the future.
Format:
Define—Deconstruct—Develop
While we will be focusing on the traditional method of defining the details to learn the facts, we won’t stop there. History is more than facts, so we’ll deconstruct that data and analyze both the facts themselves and their contextual significance by comparing and contrasting to find processes that tie the facts together. Finally, we’ll move into developing hypotheses and conclusions based on the analysis we’ve performed.
Themes:
- Humans and the Environment
- Cultural Developments and Interactions
- Governance
- Economic Systems
- Social Interactions and Organization
- Technology and Innovation
Spring Topics:
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The Emergence of New World Patterns (1500-1800)
Modern Patterns of World History (1800-1945)
Global Conflict & Globalization (1945-current)
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Offered by:
