1: An Introduction to World History

Rationale: Why study history? Why study the distant past? Why does historical thinking matter?

To fully realize history's humanizing qualities, to draw on its ability to, . . . ‘expand our conception and understanding of what it means to be human,’ we need to encounter the distant past -- a past even more distant from us in modes of thought and social organization. It is this past, one that initially leaves us befuddled or, worse, just plain bored, that we need most if we are to achieve the understanding that each of us is more than the handful of labels ascribed to us at birth. The sustained encounter with this less-familiar past teaches us the limitations of our brief sojourn on the planet and allows us to take membership in the entire human race.

History provides us with the “invaluable mental power we call judgment.”3 Recent research supports the “basic assumption that history teaches us a way to make choices, to balance opinions, to tell stories, and to become uneasy – when necessary – about the stories we tell.”4 Ultimately, democracy and effective citizenship rests significantly on each generation’s ability to think historically.

The Oakland Schools’ curriculum moves students beyond mere events, people, and dates. It encourages students to think like historians, geographers, economists, political scientists, anthropologists, and other social scientists. Such sophisticated thinking is, as some have argued, “unnatural” and often challenging for young students.5 Students whose schools have adopted the MC3/Oakland Schools’ curriculum will have encountered this type of thinking beginning in second grade. Building on discipline-focused thinking, this unit extends students’ understanding of historical thinking as they approach the study of world history. By unpacking historical and geographic thinking, students learn how these disciplines are distinct in how they ask questions and frame problems to organize and drive inquiry. They investigate how these social scientists select, analyze, and organize evidence, and then use that evidence to create accounts that answer questions or problems. These skills would be “useful every time they faced a take-home exam or research paper: how to get started when they lack necessary information, how to prepare their minds to deal with new topics, how to develop a hunch. The benefits would extend far beyond the intellectual.”6 Through the development of the historical habits of mind, students build both social and content literacy. As such, the Common Core State Standards for Literacy are a deliberate focal point of the unit.

World Geography

The unit begins by building on students’ prior knowledge of world geography studied in sixth grade. Students review how geographers examine, frame, and reframe the world by using topographical features and big “invented” geographic categories. They explore how maps are representations of places and how representations of the same place can differ based on the purposes, knowledge, and points of view of the cartographer.7 They consider how these differences shape how people create accounts of places and that the names geographers, historians or other people use -- “Europe,” the “Rhine River,” “Indonesia”, “Eastern Hemisphere” or “continents” – are interpretative ideas created by people for specific reasons. Throughout the course students will be using others’ historical accounts or maps. Understanding what went into creating an account or map is a key feature in learning to “read” them. Being able to understand and use these ideas in reading are critical, advanced literacy skills and therefore, these ideas are introduced early in the curriculum and are built upon throughout the course. By examining the perspectives and language of historians and geographers, students enrich their understanding of the past.

History as “Events” Versus History as “Accounts”

Students also engage in a deeper understanding of history. Scholars of student thinking in history have demonstrated how vital the distinction between “history as an event” and “history as an account” is for students to understand. If students think that “history” really is “all the events in the past,” then learning history must mean memorizing the events in the past. However, if students can see the distinction between these two uses of the word, and can understand that all studies of history are “accounts” of the past, then that opens students to understand the importance of thinking skills other than memorization – such as selecting events or evidence, or perspective taking, all of which are essential in historical thinking. Accordingly, the distinction of history as events versus accounts is foundational for student understanding.

Historical Thinking

Students consider how it is possible for historians to create representations or accounts of events in which they were not present or that happened thousands of years before they were even born. They learn that historians must have some evidence to support the claims they make in their accounts. Therefore, this unit introduces students to some of the content area literacy skills central entailed in teaching people “to do” history and geography. Students review the difference between primary and secondary sources (evidence) and begin to employ methods of analysis using strategies called sourcing and corroborating. They are introduced the ideas of internal and external validity, two forms of corroboration involved in reading primary and secondary sources. Students assess the internal validity by examining whether a source contradicts itself. Determining external validity requires students to explore other sources or other pieces of information that supports or challenges the source under investigation.

After learning about the importance of framing a historical problem, students explore four thinking tools that historians use to organize and analyze information: significance, social institutions, temporal frames (time), and spatial scales (space). In determining significance, students consider the characteristics that make an event significant and then apply these characteristics to their own lives. To assist students in analyzing and describing past societies, they identify how societies address their needs through the creation of social institutions (e.g., organizing power = government; producing and distributing resources including food, shelter, and clothing = economy; raising and educating children = family; disseminating culture = education; developing common beliefs and values = religion; and communicating = language). In considering time, students explore a variety of calendar systems. They also learn how historians use eras, periodization schemes, and turning points to organize and analyze information. Students then explore how historians use space to organize and analyze past events. In thinking of places as geographic “containers” in which we place historical events, students are introduced to how some containers can be too big for events and make the events difficult to see. They also explore how geographic containers that are too small for an event cut out features of the event. This is important for people who use others’ historical accounts or maps. Understanding what went into creating an account or map is a key feature in learning to “read” historical accounts and/or maps. In considering how geographers frame and reframe the earth, students refine their use and understanding of these big spatial categories throughout the unit.

These are critical and challenging lessons for students and teachers because all historical study builds upon these elements. They are the “invisible” tools that historians use to create historical accounts. Sometimes, teachers and students pay no attention to such things as institutions, or the temporal and spatial organization of the historical accounts they are teaching and learning. Too often, teachers and students simply assume that since something is in the curriculum or the textbook it is significant for some reason, and never consider significance at all.

Content Literacy

The development of content literacy skills is a critical component in this course and is integrated throughout the unit. Students are introduced to the features and structure of their history textbook. Comparing the disciplines of history and science reinforces the fact that history has its own ways of thinking, knowing, and using evidence. Students begin to examine some potential limitations of history textbooks by exploring to what extent their textbook reflects the evidentiary, problem-based, and interpretative nature of history. The unit culminates with students challenging the official and ‘unbiased’ version of historical events found in their textbooks. By comparing a textbook account of a historical event with two primary sources, students uncover that the textbook offers one narrow version of history that is often void of the ongoing investigative nature of historical inquiry and practice. Students write reflectively on the benefits of using historical habits of mind in and out of the history classroom. The concluding activity of the unit not only reinforces the big ideas explored throughout the unit, but helps establish classroom rules for small group discussions which will be employed throughout the course.