Last semester, as those of you who have read my high school blog know, my son and another student and I embarked on a study geared toward taking the World History AP exam. We got the text book (Peter Stearns) and started plowing through it.
Shortly before Thanksgiving the two students came to me, expressing dissatisfaction about the class. My son, who has an extensive history background and is a very good writer, felt that he was starting to hate history and that the relentless pace we were obliged to take so that we could "get through" the material meant that depth was being sacrificed for breadth - and that the breadth was in danger of being superficial. The other student, who does not have much of a history background and who is quite a poor writer, felt overwhelmed. She was struggling mightily to keep up and while I admired her perseverance tremendously, I had begun to wonder if this approach was really doing her any favors. And I had noticed that my son, always excited about history, was becoming rather unenthusiastic.
So together we decided to look at what was positive about what we had done, and then to move on to something else. We decided that the very disciplined approach to essay writing was extremely useful and had helped both of them enormously. We also appreciated the scope of the course and the fact that the authors attempt to make connections between the whole of human history. But.... we could also see the limitations there. We also felt that the way that "all cultures" got even attention did not serve to give an accurate portrayal of history in terms of impact on human development as a whole. Whilst the Aztec and Mayan civilizations, for instance, were important and worthy of study for anyone who wants to understand something of the diversity of the human experience, for them to be presented as having the same impact as, say, Ancient Greece, is ridiculous. Far, far more of the globe, far more cultures were directly effected by the Greeks over many, many centuries than the isolated Aztecs and Mayans! It is, of course, not a question of "better" - there is no judgment here. But it is misleading to teach students that "all cultures are equal" in terms of their lasting impact on human culture!
Anyway, we finished off with a study of China through the Song Dynasty. My son wrote a paper looking at the influence of Confucianism on government, and the other student wrote a paper comparing and contrasting Confucianism with Taoism.
This semester? We decided that since last semester we mainly focused on non European cultures, that this semester we would do a Western Civilization course. I have designed a course outline and rustled up some resources. At some point I will put those up on this blog for others to consider.
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