Available to: grade 9 students, required for those students
Knowledge of the past allows us to best understand the present, to understand the motivations of our forebears, and to consider our own beliefs and positions on issues that shape our lives. Through time, people have made choices because of the political, economic, cultural, and social forces at work when and where they lived. Our world today is inextricably linked to the choices people made in the past. As such, it is imperative that we understand the people of the past if we are to understand the choices we face today. History, at its core, is the study of the past in order to understand how and why we are at this moment. This course explores two central questions: what is history, and how do historians do history? To explore these questions we examine key events, issues and developments in the 20th century through the lenses of the diverse people who experienced them. Moving from a study of local to global history, students will learn how global events have had a local impact. Through individual and collaborative work, students begin to develop and apply the foundational skills employed by historians––active, close reading and evaluation of primary and secondary sources, crafting critical questions, contextualization, and both analytical argumentative writing grounded in evidence.
